Crimson Anima
by Shaeli Malcor
Summary: Nao saved a wayward soul stranded between worlds. Unsure of who—or even what—this lost soul with no memories was, Nao gave it form and name, as an elven girl. That girl then began a journey to find herself, but along with finding friends, love, a purpose, and dreams for the future, she also found that maybe it would have been best for Erinn if she had just been left in the void...
1. --Preface--

_The usual disclaimer everyone puts in their fanfics: Mabinogi and its contents are all intellectual property of Nexon/devCat, aside from the original characters I made for this story._

 _Now that we have that out of the way, what is this, really?_

 _I originally posted this story as a long-running series of in-game MabiNovels on the NA Mari server over a span of 70 weeks, starting back in September of 2016, with the final chapter posted in January of 2018. That format limits each chapter to 40 lines of 200 characters, but lets you include character portraits and in-game music to accompany your story. Of course, here I have no such luxury of audio/visual bells and whistles, but I can have all the text I want. A fair trade._

 _The original work was written in first person, but for this 'remastering' of sorts, I'm converting the story to a limited third-person subjective narrative, though you as the reader will primarily experience what the main character experiences, and will be privy to their thoughts, as it is ultimately their story._

 _As it stands, this story is a near-complete retelling of the plot-line of the Generations quests, which goes off the rails of canon before smashing them completely. I tried to stay faithful to the characteristics of locations in the game, and the personalities of NPCs, but the events do not unfold the way you knew them. At the time I wrote the ending, Generation 21 wasn't out even on the KR server, and what I had made up certainly didn't match with what the new content brought us; the last couple of chapters are going to need a significant rework._

 _Since this is basically a second draft of an already-complete story, updates should come quickly as long as life's little snags aren't consuming all my time with crisis mitigation: I want to get this done before life gets in the way again and something really bad happens that makes it impossible for me to continue. I really do want it done. Life does get in the way sometimes though; when I have long hours at work, it doesn't leave me much time for anything else. But it will go on for as long as I'm able to type, until I see it through to the end._

 _With that said, let's begin._


	2. Advent

**Crimson Anima, Chapter 1: Advent**

* * *

It was an endless void of darkness and silence, a place of nothingness that denied existence, a place between worlds outside any reality.

Alone, in this place, drifted a lost soul, a will with no body and no memories.

It could think, but had nothing to think of.

 _I think, therefore I am — but without reference, without stimulus, without purpose._

It saw without eyes, but there was nothing to see. It heard without ears, but there was no sound.

 _I can't remember who I was anymore. I don't remember where I lived.  
_ _How I lived. When I lived._ _When I...died.  
_ _I must be dead. This void can only be death; what lies beyond death._

It could will itself to move, but there was nothing in the void to go to. It had nothing to do but reflect upon its own emptiness.

 _I knew myself, once. But those memories...are gone._ _Did I simply forget, after so long without material form?_ _Or does the void of death wipe the soul clean?  
_ _It makes no difference…. I just wish I could remember anything… Something to dwell on. Something to cling to. Anything at all..._

There was nothing in this place. Nothing but torment; the torment of existence denied. Or rather...there _had_ been nothing. By chance, the wandering soul had disturbed an intangible flow that touched upon the void, and the watcher of that flow noticed. In response, something, a presence, reached into the void, and called out.

 _Sound? Yes._ _That was...a s_ _ound._ A voice. A voice from...beyond the void. The lost soul didn't know the language the voice spoke, but somehow it understood the voice without knowing the words.

"Oh, lost and fading soul. Do you desire life anew?"

 _Is this real, or madness?_ _Is the void now taking my mind, now that it has taken everything else?_

No. The voice repeats. Stronger. It is _real._ "Oh, lost and fading soul. Do you desire life anew?"

 _I want to answer. I want nothing more than to answer, to cry out, "yes!"_ _But I don't know **how** to answer it. I have no body, and I want to scream._

The soul was nothing more than a formless mass of thoughts and feelings adrift in a void.

 _What do I even answer with?_ Not knowing what else to do, it thought. _Yes. Yes. Yes! I want to live again!_ It pleaded to the unbidden voice, a silent plea for salvation, and it waited.

 _Will I be heard? Will I be answered?_ It knew not how long it had been waiting. Time had no meaning here. There was only an eternal _now_.

Finally, an absolution arrived.

"Then it is so. I grant unto this lost soul form and life anew."

There was something in the darkness that was not darkness.

 _I remember what this is. A memory of...light? Light. This is light!_

A light erupted in the darkness.

 _Light. It's coming towards me. Or am I moving towards it? I cannot tell._

It grows. It consumes the darkness. It consumes the lost soul.

 _Painful and beautiful, an exquisite agony!_

An incredible cascade of forgotten sensations floods into its consciousness. Warmth. Gravity. Sound. Vibration. Form. It had been bound into a cage of fleshly existence.

 _What is this...? What am I...feeling?_

The flesh stirs, unbidden. A sensation of rhythmic pulsing. A heart beats. A rush of air into a swelling chest. A first breath. In and out, in and out. Primal knowledge, less than memories, flooded back into the lost soul. How to exist. How to perceive. How to move. How to live.

 _These are...arms? And...legs? The flesh tells me, yes, that's what these are._

It tried to move them. The unfamiliar appendages shifted just so, untried and clumsy.

 _These are...eyes? Yes.  
_ _Open. I must open these eyes._

The newly incarnated soul opened the eyes of its new body, and it was overwhelmed by their first light.

 _I know only of darkness. Everything is impossibly bright in comparison.  
_ _It hurts. It hurts to look at it...but I have to.  
_ _The flesh commands, keep the eyes open, drink in more light. I must. They will...adjust?_

The vision became bearable. Variations emerged.

 _These...are colors._ _What are the ones I'm seeing called? Blue. Brown. Blue sky and brown earth._

Out of these disparate sensations formed an awareness.

 _This body is lying on its back. Lying on something. Something solid. Firm. Warm.  
_ _It is looking up, up into a sky filled with clouds._

Now one with its new body, it no longer knew where mind ends and flesh begins.

 _I am one with it. It is one with me._ _There is only "me" now. Alive.  
...Alive!  
_ _I want to experience more. I want...to move._

The reborn soul tried to lift its new body from the ground.

 _Stand. I want to stand. How do I stand up?  
_ _Push with the arms. Lift with the legs._ _  
_

It rose up. Unsteady, untested, but it stood.

 _I want to look around. How? Turn the neck. Turn the head. Move the feet._

It slowly turned in a circle, seeing all that there was to see around it.

 _I am...not alone? There is another being here with me.  
_ _Her form is similar to mine. She is draped in black. Her hair is long and white._

Nao, the keeper of the Soul Stream, smiled at the girl she had saved from the jaws of oblivion. "Hello there. This must all be very strange to you, um...? I...do not know what to call you. Usually when a soul arrives from the Soul Stream, I know their name right away. What is your name?"

The girl turned to face the woman dressed in black.

 _This voice. This voice is the one that called out to me, called me back from oblivion. She...asked me a question. I need to answer. I need to...talk to her. It's hard to shape these words. I don't remember how...but I have to try._

For the first time, the girl spoke, and heard her own voice, stuttering and uncertain. "I...don't know...m-my name. I don't...remember...a-anything. I was in...darkness. Then I was...here?"

Something occurred to the girl. She was alive again, in a world again, but...nothing was moving, save for herself and the woman in the black dress.

 _Shouldn't there be...motion? Shouldn't there be...life?_

Nao noticed the look of concern on the girl's face. "I guess you've noticed? You are not quite fully immersed in this world yet. I wanted to allow you to adjust, to ease yourself back into life. When you are ready, you will experience everything."

 _I don't understand. What is this place? Oh. Right. I have to say it._

The girl asked, "Where is this...? And...w-who are you?"

"My name is Nao Mariota Pryderi. ...You can just call me Nao. It is my duty to lead souls like yours to the land of Erinn. But I must admit, you are...unusual. I had to choose your form, as you could not envision one yourself. I hope you like it. It...felt right for you."

"Choose...my form?"

 _Oh. Bodies like this one c_ _o_ _me in two forms. Forms called 'male' and 'female.' This body is 'female.' It feels...familiar. It feels right._

Nao put a hand on the girl's shoulder. "You must be terribly confused, if you were in the Soul Stream for so long that your memories vanished. You do not know your name at all? We must call you by something. Shall I give you one?"

 _A name. Do I...need a name? I don't know. But I...think I want one._

"...yes," the girl said. "I...I'd like that."

Nao smiled. "There is a very old word that suits you: 'Mearaithe.' But that's a bit too long. Too awkward. Perhaps just 'Meara,' then. Do you care for it?"

 _It feels strange. I do not know my true name. 'Meara' certainly isn't it. But it's as good a name as any. I can accept it.  
_ _Meara. I am Meara now._

"Meara?" the girl repeated. "I...I guess it'll do."

Nao gave a satisfied nod. "Now then...Meara. You must have so many questions! I will answer as many as I can. What can I help you understand?"

 _I don't even know where to begin._

"Only everything."

 _This...is going to take a lot of getting used to._


	3. Blank Slate

**Crimson Anima, Chapter 2: Blank Slate**

* * *

Nao patiently answered every question Meara had—at least, every question she was allowed to answer, but most of Nao's answers only left Meara with more questions than she'd started with.

 _According to her, newly-arrived souls to this world chose their desired physical form, and what they wanted to be called. Nothing about my arrival has been normal, though..._

Meara didn't know her real name. She didn't know what she should look like, or that she should even have a name, or look like anything. She'd almost completely forgotten physical existence itself.

 _There are three sentient species in this world, Erinn. 'Humans', 'Giants', and 'Elves.' I was made an Elf, as Nao felt that it was...the least awkward fit? I find that choice of words discomforting…_

They went on talking for hours as the world stood still around them. When Meara could think of nothing more to ask that Nao could answer, Nao gave Meara a letter—to be more accurately, it simply appeared in Meara's hands.

Nao pointed to a large home at the top of a staircase in the distance. "Take this to another elf named Castanea, in that house over there on the hill. She can help you further. As for myself, I have other duties I must attend to. I will see you again...soon."

With that, Nao rose into the air, and vanished with a flash of light. As soon as she was gone...the world around Meara began to _move._

Stillness became a cacophony of sounds and motion.

 _Too much noise! Too much_ _motion_ _!_

She covered her ears and closed her eyes until she was desensitized enough to bear it.

 _Now I know what Nao meant when she said I'd "see everything when I was ready."_

The other myriad elves walked about, coming and going, conversing with one another, yet paying Meara little notice.

Meara started walking, awkwardly, towards the house she'd been directed to. _I'm not used to this body,_ she thought. _Well, I guess it's **my** body, now. The connections are there, but it takes me a few tries before I get the right muscles to do what I want. _

The house she was looking for was on the far side of a pool full of a shimmering clear substance. An ornate pillar of stone stood out of the middle of it.

 _What was this called? Water? Water. A pond of water._

Meara walked to the edge of the pond, and looked down. A distorted image of a female elf looked back up at her from the shimmering water, wearing a plain shirt and short skirt the color of the sky above. The same as what Meara was wearing. She made the connection.

 _My...reflection? This is what I look like?_

She leaned closer. The figure in the pond had pale skin, and bright red long hair stirred by the breeze. Her eyes were yellow, with narrow vertical slits for pupils. Elongated pointy ears stuck out diagonally through the crimson strands. Her small mouth seemed to default to a frown.

 _Nao's eyes weren't like mine. Is this normal? Maybe elves just have_ _odd_ _eyes...? Did I have this same face once before? In my...past life?_

Meara tried to recall what she used to look like, to no avail. The memory simply wasn't there.

 _Nothing. Nothing remains. That past-face of me-that-was is lost to me._

Meara turned away, walking around the pond. The ground ahead rose up in a jagged artificial pattern.

 _Stairs? I think that's what these are, yes. Stairs._ She awkwardly climbed, one step at a time, nearly falling forward several times. As she reached the top of the stairs and approached the house, the door before her opened.

 _My arrival seems to have been expected._

A female elf dressed in dark purple robes stepped out, closing the door behind her.

"Are...you Castanea?" Meara asked.

"Yes, I am Castanea," the elven leader replied. "So...Nao has sent us another wayward soul, hm? Welcome to Filia. I am the overseer of this city. And you are...Meara?

Meara nodded, and handed Castanea the letter. She took it carefully, as if it were a dangerous thing, and began to read it: aloud at first, but after a few lines, she trailed off and kept the remainder of the text to herself.

"Let's see here. 'Dear Castanea. The one who bears this letter needs your particular guidance. Their spirit has been trapped in the Soul Stream for an untold length of time. Their memories are gone. They could not even...' Hmm? ...Oh. ...Oh, my."

Castanea shifted her gaze from the letter to Meara and back several times, as she read the remainder of it in silence, then folded the paper again and tucked it into her robe.

"...I see," Castanea said. "I am afraid I do not know if we can help you. So, you have lost your identity, correct? It seems strange to me for anyone to want such memories to come back. Consider this: what if you do not like what you find? Try and look at this as an opportunity; as a gift. You can experience the world anew, free of all the burdens you once carried. You've been given from the start what we Elves all aspire to."

Meara shook her head. "No. I...still want to know who I am...even if it's bad. Then I'd...know what to expect if I...ever meet someone I used to know. If I should...try and make amends."

Castanea sighed. "...If you insist. Whatever comes, I wash my hands of it. Well, let's try this, then." She briefly pointed at the stone pillar in the pond. "Do you see that pillar, in the water? That is the Memory Tower. It can store memories, and then bestow them to other Elves. It stores all that which we Elves must remember. Shall we try an experiment, then? Please go and touch the Memory Tower. As you are from another world, I do not know what will happen. At worst, nothing. In the meanwhile, I must...speak with someone."

Meara nodded. _It's as good an idea as any, even if she sounds...suspicious._ She turned, and wobbled her way back down the steps awkwardly. _Why is coming down harder than going up?_

Meara heard steps behind her. Castanea was following down the steps. As she turned towards the pool, the other woman turned aside and walked towards a nearby house to the left.

Reaching the pond, Meara took her shoes off and waded into the shallow water. Slowly, she approached the pillar. A strange feeling came over her...as if her skin didn't want to stay attached to her body. She raised her right hand, and gently pressed it against the engraved stone as she closed her eyes.

Some minutes passed. Nothing more happened. Nothing surfaced in the void of her mind.

 _Whatever memories this stone holds...it seems that none of them are meant for me._

She clamored back out of the water, putting her shoes back on.

Castanea approached with another elven woman, who had black hair and empty orange eyes. She wore a pink robe with maroon sleeves. "No reaction? Curious... Meara, this is Atrata, our village's healer. I believe her...circumstances...will better relate to yours. I will take my leave now. Good day."

Castanea walked away, back towards her home. The other elf took a step forward and nodded in greeting.

"Hello, Meara. I am Atrata. Castanea has told me of your plight. I see you were trying to use the Memory Tower. Did it...reveal anything to you?"

"N-No. I felt...strange near it. Like my skin wanted to...crawl off my body? Other than that, n-nothing."

Atrata placed her right hand on Meara's shoulder, in sympathy. "I'm sorry to hear that. Perhaps, because you are new to Erinn, it seems the Tower didn't know what to share with you? I do not understand its workings as Castanea does. For what it's worth, I understand how you feel." Atrata backed away, putting a hand over her heart. "I, too, feel the pain of lost memories. Even if Castanea tells me I'm better off, I'm still curious what was once there. It must be the same for you."

Meara shook her head. "I...don't know what I'm feeling...or what I _should_ feel. I...don't even remember _that_ much."

"I can only suggest this, then: walk around Filia. Look at everything. Experience everything. Maybe that will awaken some of your memories, and it will give you somewhere to start looking for the rest of them. You may not have specifically chosen to be an Elf of your own volition, but we welcome you all the same. You may always think of Filia as home."

 _Home, huh? I'm not even sure what than_ _ **means**_ _anymore._ "Um, thanks. I'll...I'll try that."

Parting company, Meara walked through the small collection of stone structures, then passed through a gap in the line of white stones that seemed to indicate the edge of this...town? She walked between two large stone hills, then stopped to take in her surroundings, to _experience_ the new sensations.

The feeling of wind on her skin. The warmth of the sun shining down. The smell of dust. The sight of sand dunes in the distance. The sound of rustling leaves from the tall trees behind her.

Absolutely none of it felt familiar to her.

 _Maybe I just didn't go outside much._

Sighing, Meara turned back towards the elven town, not wanting to risk losing her way out in the wilderness.

 _ _I have a whole world to search, and I don't even know what I'm looking for. Right now...just a place to start would be nice.__


	4. Shards

**Crimson Anima, Chapter 3: Shards**

* * *

Days passed. Meara took her time carefully examining everything in Filia, studying it, and for her efforts the locals only gave her odd and questioning looks.

 _Nothing seems like it's... **familiar**. I look at it, and somehow I know what it's called, but...it just doesn't seem like I have any strong connection to it._

Sometimes a tiny shard of memory re-emerged; the faintest impression that she'd seen or used the same thing before, once, long ago. Only sometimes.

 _A few tiny shards of memories, broken pieces of a life that was. A few puzzle pieces out of thousands, and no picture to compare it to. It's...better than nothing, I guess._

She'd given up trying to converse with the other elves any further. They didn't seem to remember much of anything themselves, aside from their chosen occupation. Most of their memories weren't even their own, as if a few select moments from each of them were shared with all the others, and the rest had been erased.

 _My grasp of speaking is still poor. I stammer and stutter. I can think the words, but my mouth struggles to voice them. I need to practice that too...but first I'm going to have to find people that are more talkative..._

Atrata had tried to teach Meara a bit of herb lore, but it had been an awkward experience, with Meara's difficulties in communicating.

 _Atrata said skills were important...that I should learn as many as I could, that I should practice them. I suppose I'll need them if I'm going to get by here._

Filia was only a small village in a huge world. Before long it felt like Meara had seen everything, experienced everything in it. She started to wander about in the nearby desert as well, though she dared not go far into the sands.

 _Hagel warned me not to go out into the deep desert. Elves get lost out there, or so he said. They lose their way. They lose their memories. They lose themselves. Well, I'm already missing two of those. I shouldn't take the risk._

And so it went on for ten days, until one morning Castanea came looking to talk to Meara. Her efforts and frustrations had not gone unnoticed by the elven leader.

"Good day, Meara. How are you feeling today? And how is your...self-discovery going?"

"Both could be worse. Or better. I've been just about...everywhere a-around Filia, though, and I don't think I'm, um, going to recall...anything more." _I wish I could stop stammering._

"I suppose it's not unexpected. However, I felt I should point out something. I believe you were warned not to stray far from Filia? As one from another world, you are not bound to the Memory Tower. You are free to go where you wish. Perhaps it's time for you to broaden your horizons in your search for yourself."

Reaching into a pocket of her robe, Castanea took out a delicate smooth blue object in the shape of a bird's wing, made of some flimsy material that looked like it could easily break. She handed it to Meara.

"There is another continent beyond the great ocean, with more people such as yourself that have come from another world. If you break this wing apart, the magic within it will take you there. Perhaps you will find more to aid you in Uladh. And if you can't recover your old memories, why not simply create new ones? That is the way of us Elves."

Meara looked at the wing, then at Castanea. Something about this...offering just didn't sit right. _I don't think that's the reason she's giving this to me. I think she just wants me to go away and stop asking questions._

"But if this takes me...far away, how am I ever going to get back here?"

"The world is vast, but all of our hearts are here. If you strongly desire to return, you'll find a way. ...I suspect you won't want to come back to this tiny little village, though, once you've seen everything this world has to offer. I wish you luck on your journey. Perhaps we shall meet again."

With that, Castanea turned and walked away, leaving Meara holding the delicate blue wing.

 _Simple enough. Just break it, right?_

But she hesitated.

 _Maybe leaping off into the unknown isn't such a good idea. I don't trust Castanea. She seems to know too much about what's going on with this..._ _group_ _mind...thing going on here. I'_ _ll_ _bet_ _ **her**_ _memory is fully intact._

 _...Maybe that's all the more reason to leave._

 _I'm more comfortable with this new existence, but I still feel helpless dealing with the unknown. I can't let that stop me, though. If I've managed this much...novelty, I think I can handle whatever comes._

Meara stared at the delicate waxen wing in her hand. Castanea had said it was enchanted with a spell to send her...somewhere else, right? Something did seem strange about it...as if it was permeated with some kind of...energy.

 _I do not know myself. I do not know why, nor how to know myself once more. Neither does anyone else here. If there are no more answers in Filia, then I'll face my fear of the unknown._

Hesitantly, Meara snapped the little wax wing in half. Reality itself twisted around her. One moment she was in Filia, another moment she was...somewhere else.

In astonishment, she looked around at her new surroundings, almost tripped and falling on the steps behind her. She was standing under a large tree. It was a land of a dozen shades of green, abundant with verdant life. The air was cool and dry.

An old human male in gray and tan clothing stood before a nearby stone house. He was unfazed by Meara's sudden appearance nearby...in fact, he seemed to have been expecting her arrival. The man raised one hand in greeting.

"Ah, welcome. Meara, is it? Madame Castanea sent me a letter about you. Welcome to Tir Chonaill. We haven't seen an elf around here in years, so forgive us if you encounter any...strange reactions."

Hearing this confirmed her suspicions. _So he_ _ **was**_ _expecting me. Castanea must have planned this._ "Um, yes. H-hello..." _I knew it. Maybe I was getting too close to something she didn't want looked into?_ _Too late now..._

The old man continued. "I am Duncan, chief of this village. Sorry to hear about your memory problems. I'm afraid I may not be of much help to you in that regard… All I can suggest is that you try as many new things as possible. There's a lot here that you could learn. Perhaps something will jog your memory... For now, why don't you look around the village?"

"I'll...I'll do that." _But I wonder if this world even has anything in common with...wherever I came from,_ she wondered.

Duncan looked around warily, then back to Meara. "You'll be safe enough in our village, but don't wander off too far. Things have been uneasy around here as of late. The Fomors are stirring again, and someone...in your condition...shouldn't get tangled up with them."

 _OK, now he's lost me._ "...Fomors?"

"They're a race of beings that humanity fought a long, bloody war with many years ago. After humans won, the Fomors retreated to the darker places of Uladh. I'm concerned they're up to something sinister again, considering the local animals have started turning aggressive lately. Don't worry about it too much, though...you have bigger problems."

Meara sighed. "Thanks for reminding me."

A cool wind blowing down from the mountains chilled Meara's bare legs. _This short dress might have been fine in the hot desert, but here? Not so much._

Duncan continued. "I apologize. That came out wrong. It would be wonderful if you could recover your memories, but at the least, I also hope you can find some purpose for your new life here in Erinn...even if you never find yourself, you can still find a calling. That, however, you'll have to do on your own..."

Meara looked down at her feet, then back up at Duncan. "Well, thank you for the...emotional support. I'll go...have a look around then." _I think I'm going to be here for a long time. I might as well get familiar with this place._

With a smile, Duncan added, "Anyway, if you ever have any more questions, feel free to ask me. I'll be right here."

Meara nodded. "I will. If I remember..." _Well, I don't seem to have problems remembering anything new. It's just everything old that's gone._

Meara turned and carefully walked down the steps wrapping around the large tree, down to a large circular shallow pit with the bottom covered in stones. Something that Duncan had said lingered in her thoughts…

 _'My_ _new_ _life...' My_ _new life, huh?_ _Yes. I have a life again. I'm alive again. But what do I_ _ **do**_ _with it now? All I've been doing is looking downward, searching for myself…b_ _ut what if I **never** get my memory back?_

 _What do I do with myself then? What_ _ **can**_ _I do? What do I even like doing? I...don't know._

 _Maybe those are the most important questions._

This place was quite a bit different than Filia. Trees. Grass. Bushes. Flowers. ...Chickens? Oddly enough, whenever she looked at something, the name of it came to her. It seems Nao hadn't just given Meara a body, but knowledge of the local language.

 _I might be here for years. For decades. Maybe even forever._ _I'm going to have to look down less, and start looking forward more._

Meara's stomach made an odd rumbling noise.

 _I...think I'm hungry? I have to...eat? I guess having a body again means I have to take care of it… For now...I think I'll look for something to eat. **Then** I'll try looking forward. _

__...It's a start.__


	5. New Life

**Crimson** **Anima, Ch** **apter** **4** **: New Life**

* * *

Meara awoke in the upstairs room of the inn to the sound of chickens clucking outside at dawn's first light. She threw off the single threadbare sheet and rubbed her eyes as she pulled herself out of the small bed.

 _Quarter past dark o'clock. Ugh. I don't feel like I was ever an early riser._

Suppressing a yawn, she left the room, quietly closing the door, then descended the stairs in time to see Caitlin walking out the doors after making a morning delivery of fresh-baked bread.

 _Where does she find the time?_

The innkeeper Piaras greeted her. "Good morning, Meara."

"Morning," she half-mumbled in passing as she walked past the front desk. Meara pushed through the blinds to the dining room, sat down on a stool, and ate one of the small loaves of bread set out. _Hmm, still warm._

"Staying another night?" Piaras asked. Meara mumbled a 'mm-hmm' with her mouth full. "All right then. You know the deal. Lumber axe is out back."

 _Shouldn't complain,_ Meara thought _, getting a place to sleep as long as I chop firewood for him every day… Keeps me out of the cold at night. Though with that single sheet it's not much better._

After the modest meal, Meara stepped outside only to have her senses assaulted by a cloud of dust that made her cough, and the first rays of the sun peeking over the hills that stung her eyes a bit. Nora was nearby, beating the dust out of a rug hanging on the nearby clothesline with a heavy wooden club.

"Morning, Meara!" She gave the rug another thump, coughing on dust herself. "Ugh, dusty! Sorry about that. These don't clean themselves..."

"Morning," she mumbled. _So cheerful for so early. Do none of these people sleep? Well, time to earn my_ _room and board._ Meara went behind the inn, picked up an old lumber axe leaning against a support beam, crossed the wood bridge with it, and got to work chopping.

Her first clumsy swing merely grazed the tree. _I have a feeling that me-that-was didn't do much physical activity._ The next swing struck true, producing a chunk of firewood. _It also occurs to me that it's terribly strange that I can keep chopping the same trees without ever completely cutting them down..._

The third swing was solid, but nothing came of it. _I've done this for, what, twelve days now? W_ _hy is it that things like this seem bizarre to me, but not things like bags that appear out of nowhere that somehow_ _let me_ _carry triple my weight in random junk?_

A few more swings and the tree dropped four more chunks of firewood. Meara had found the hard way that it did no good to persist after five; the tree would produce no more for hours.

 _The world I came from must have been really weird. Another world... If I came from another world, then obviously I won't find any direct evidence of my past in this one... All I can hope for is to find something that reminds of who I was, and what I was like._

After gathering the requested wood, she picked it up and hauled it back to the inn, setting it in the corner at the base of the steps.

 _There. Done._ "There's your firewood," she said to Piaras. He nodded, wrote something down in the guestbook, then said, "Thanks, Meara. I've got you down for another night. Enjoy your day."

 _If only it were so simple._ She went back outside, then sat down on the edge of the bridge near the blacksmith, dangling her feet and legs over the side. She opened a book she had with her, "Easy Part-Time Jobs," to where she'd left off. She'd tried taking on several jobs for the villagers over the last week, with varying degrees of success.

Tailoring for Malcolm had been a miserable failure. Caitin and Ferghus had only asked her to deliver a few items, which had been simple enough. Endeylon had asked her to gather eggs and Meara had broken half of them. And she thought she'd had been clever when she tied the sheep's ankles together to keep them to running away, only for Deian to yell at her to stop abusing the sheep—and not to come back.

 _And thus I learned that I'm bad at almost everything but making deliveries._

She read the book until midday, then remembered she had an appointment to keep at the healer's house. Dilys had been trying to get at the root of her memory loss, with little success.

Nervously, Meara trudged into the healer's house. Dilys immediately turned to greet her. "Right on time! Would you mind sitting down? I found a new diagnostic manual..."

 _Here we go again. Dilys treats me like a lab rat._

Meara sat down on the chair by the desk, as Dilys picked up one of the heavy books sitting on it, opening it up halfway. _More questions._

"So, what's the earliest thing you remember, Meara?"

"Before...waking up in Filia? Being dead….I think."

"Well, people don't get better from dead, but maybe things are different for you Milletians. What is it exactly that you recall about that?"

"It was...dark. And silent. And I think I was there for...a _very_ long time." _Such a skeptic. The first day I met her, she tugged on my ears thinking they weren't real._

"Hmm." Dilys leaned closer. "So you don't remember facts. What about skills?"

"I don't know what skills I had. I couldn't even...walk properly at first. I still can't speak well...but I'm getting better with practice."

"So, you remember new things all right?"

"I...I think so."

"Well, if you can remember something new for more than ten seconds, then your short-term to long-term memory conversion is still working. I don't know what else to call it: you've got retrograde amnesia. What it amounts to...is that memory of your past life history is inaccessible, but basic skills and muscle memory remain. It can result from injury, or from...emotional trauma."

"Emotional trauma?" _Does a few millennia of disembodiment and completely sensory deprivation count as emotional trauma?_

"If the cause is physical; if the brain is damaged, those memories might simply be gone. Erased. You don't seem to have any physical brain damage, though. It's gotta be in there somewhere."

"I don't have brain damage? Thanks, Dilys. That's...that's the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me. At least in the last three weeks, anyway, because that's all I remember." Meara's expression was as flat as her voice, and her words were dripping with sarcasm.

"I understand you're frustrated, Meara. There's a bright side to it. If your amnesia **is** the result of emotional trauma, then it means your memory's probably just buried...and it's still in there somewhere. You might get it back...you might not."

"Any ideas how to do that?"

"Afraid not. Usually doing something familiar can bring the lost memories back, but..."

"But I don't even know what's familiar to me…"

"Sorry, Meara. Just try out everything. Something's got to click. ...You can go now."

Dismayed, Meara left the healer's house.

 _Well, now what do I do for the rest of the day? I might have time to go do a delivery job for Ferghus, but..._

She weighed her options: lug around a heavy object for Ferghus, or do something fun?

 _Nah. I think I'll just go fishing. Kind of boring, but it gives me time to think. For someone that's only been alive three weeks, I have a lot to think about. Maybe. I...don't have any reference._

After retrieving a half-empty can of bait and worn fishing pole from the strange "inventory" bag she'd bought earlier, Meara walked out onto the pier by the school. A young boy she hadn't seen before was there fishing as well, seemingly transfixed.

 _Another Milletian, I guess? I'm starting to see more of them around lately..._

She sat down near the boy. He ignored her.

"Um, hello?" No reply. _It's like he's not even there. Oh well._

Meara sat down, and cast the fishing line out into the pond. _Every time I see someone else fishing here, it's as if they're in a trace. They never speak. They just sit there and fish._

She propped up her fishing pole between her knees to free up her hands for a moment, then stretched her arms out.

 _My back feels stiff after a long day..._

As she stretched, something fell out of her pocket, landing onto the wood planks with a faint _clink_ sound. Meara turned to pick it back up, examining it closely.

 _Oh. It's that earring_ _I found up in the snowfield yesterday._ She'd gone through the northern gateway the previous day to explore a bit, but turned back after only a few minutes because of the cold. _Who'd put an earring on a snowman, anyway?_ There were a bunch of snowmen in a clearing. She'd found the earring embedded in one of them.

 _I wonder who it belonged to? I asked around town about it. Nobody seems to have lost it… Duncan gave me a funny look when he saw it, though, before he said he didn't know anything about it. Maybe he...lied to me?_

She recalled what had happened with Castanea earlier.

 _I don't know who I can trust. I can't tell when anyone's lying to me…_ _Oh, well. I can't wear_ _this_ _...I don't have pierced ears, and I'm not about to subject myself to having a needle stabbed through them._

Meara threw the old earring into the fishing pond.

 _No use to me. Probably wasn't important, anyway._

She sighed and let her few thoughts drift. After a few moments, there was a tug on her fishing pole as something took the bait.

 _Oh! Got one! Feels like a big catch. You won't get away this time!_


	6. Calling

**Crimson Anima, Chapter 5: Calling**

* * *

The first light of dawn and the calls of roosters roused Meara from a fitful and dreamless sleep.

After a quarter-hour of futile efforts to return to her slumber, she finally threw off the sheet, stretched, yawned, and rubbed the sleep out of her eyes. Stumbling out of bed, she picked up the book that she'd fallen asleep reading from the floor beside the bed.

Meare sluggishly lumbered down the stairs, set the book on the front counter, mumbling a "Morning" to Piaras, then trudged into the adjacent dining room. The usual bread had been set out long enough to be mostly cool.

After a few bites, Meara looked back at Piaras, and asked, "You wouldn't happen to have any other books?"

Piaras shook his head. "You've read every book I've got, Meara. They're kind of hard to come by in a backwater village like this. Ever been to Dunbarton? They've got a big library down there I'm sure you'd love."

"No, but I've been thinking about it." She took another bite of bread and chewed it. "Doesn't it take four hours to walk down there, though? I'd have to turn around and come back almost as soon as I got there, or else I'd have to camp out on the road overnight."

"Not necessarily," Piaras replied. "You could just use the Moongate there to get back when it activates in the evening. You'll still have to walk down there, though, since they only work at night."

"Hmm..." _I'll have to get down there someday soon. I have other plans today, though..._

After eating, Meara took care of her morning routine of chopping firewood to cover room and board, dropped it off at the inn, then rushed off to the school—today she would try attending classes.

Several Milletians stood in the practice yard among the training dummies. As Meara walked into the congregation, most of the other students gave her some odd looks...but said nothing.

 _...you're staring at my ears, aren't you?_

The instructor, Ranald, a middle-aged man, looked over the gathered students, then looked closer at Meara as if he didn't believe his eyes. "Um, you there. Meara. Miss, are you...an elf?"

"Y-yes. Is that going to be a problem?" _It's annoying always being singled out like this. At least nobody's done anything more than briefly regard me as an oddity before going back to their routine._

Ranald crossed his arms. "I don't know. I've never had an elf sign up for my classes. Just try and follow along, show me what you can do, and we'll see how this goes."

"I'll try..."

After handing out a blunt practice sword to each student, Ranald instructed, "All right, we're just going to go over the very basics today. Take some practice swings against the wooden training dummies and I'll observe how you do."

The other students did well enough, but Meara, still being uncoordinated, completely missed half the time, and just couldn't manage the motions. Her blundering, missed swings, dropped weapons, and Ranald's constant reprovals disrupted the entire class.

 _I'm still...clumsy._ _I'm just making a fool of myself._ _I think I'_ _ve_ _just ruined it for every other elf who might follow me here in the future._

"All right, that's enough. Have a seat on the benches and take a break. Most of you...did all right," Ranald said, staring at Meara disapprovingly. "Maybe you'll do better with archery."

The students sat down on the wooden benches at the edge of the practice yard, two to a bench. A girl with black hair and red eyes sat down next to her. She was at least five inches taller than Meara.

"You were flailing that thing around like you were born yesterday," the tall girl said.

"More like a month ago. It's...a long story," Meara warily replied.

"...if you say so… Anyway, you need to put your whole body into your swing. You were just flicking it around at the wrist. You can't do that with a real weapon. Something metal is gonna be a lot heavier."

"I'll...I'll try that next time." _If there_ _ **is**_ _a next time._ "...Thanks."

As the students rested, Ranald set up three archery targets along the south fence, then handed out a shortbow and ten arrows to each student.

"All right now; second part of the class today," Ranald announced. "Take turns firing all ten shots. We'll see how you all do with this."

Two students went before Meara did. The first one did terribly, not landing a single shot. The second one managed to barely hit the outer rings of the target with three out of ten of their arrows.

Meara then stepped to the front of the line, nocked an arrow as she'd seen the others do it, and raised the bow to take aim.

 _I can do this. I think I can do it. Can I do it? I, I just point the arrow and let the string go, right?_

She released the bowstring...and the arrow hit the target, about halfway out from the center.

 _I did it!_

Her remaining nine shots showed steady improvement. The last arrow almost landed a bulls-eye, but not quite, earning some applause from a couple of the other students, but jealous scowls and jeers from the others. Even Ranald nodded in approval, seeming impressed...or at least surprised.

Meara stepped back and watched the other students take their turns. The tall girl that Meara spoke to earlier missed half her shots. A young man with brown hair hit the target with seven out of ten arrows. None of the others managed more than four.

"Interesting," Ranald exclaimed. "Well done, Miss Meara. Guess there's something to the elves' reputation for archery after all. The rest of you...well, it was a good first try. That will be all for today. Class dismissed!"

As Meara left, Ranald pulled her aside, giving her a disapproving glare. ' _Don't come back tomorrow_ ' was practically written all over his face, before he even said anything.

 _Uh-oh._

"Meara, allow me to be blunt. You're...lacking the basic coordination I expect in my combat training students. Is it just you, or are all elves like this?" He shook his head, then continued without giving Meara a chance to respond. "As for archery, I only teach the very basics, and you're clearly already beyond that. Given your...divergent levels of talents, I think it would be best if you continue training on your own. Sorry."

Later that evening, in her room at the inn, Meara lay on the bed staring up at the ceiling, reflecting on the day.

 _I wouldn't call it wasted time and money, but...I'm disappointed. Disappointed at myself. I really embarrassed myself with that sad display of gross ineptitude. How do you miss a Smash attack? I surprised even myself with archery, though…_

 _I suppose it's only because in this world, elves are just supposed to be naturally good at it? Every shot felt easier than the last. Maybe with some more practice, I could be pretty good at it. But there was no...familiarity._

She closed her eyes and slowly drifted off to a dreamless sleep.

The next day, Meara did her morning routine yet again, then returned to the school, this time going into the classroom for a magic lesson.

 _This is going to set me back a week's wages from part time jobs. Hope it's worth it..._

When she walked in, she found six other Milletians already in attendance. Four sat on the stools around the central table, laden with books, which had a brazier and caldron built into the middle of it. The other two stood off to the side. The red-haired instructor, Lassar, stood in the back of the room by a chalkboard.

They all gave her an odd look when she walked in, but said nothing…

 _What? ...they're staring at my ears again, aren't they?_

The instructor looked over the gathered Milletians, looked at Meara a second time as if she didn't believe her eyes the first time, then cleared her throat. "Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our magic class. Today, we will go into the basic principles of magic and Mana…"

Lassar's lessons were as hands-off as Ranald's lessons were hands-on. Meara sat though two days of lectures, hanging on every word; she grasped the idea, but the other students just seemed bored. While Meara understood everything, the others seem to be struggling with the lessons, some more than others. It was simply...familiar to her, somehow...

On the third day, Lassar motioned for everyone to step outside as the class began.

"Today, we're going to be taking our lesson outside," she began. "Now, I'm sure you're all eager to finally have some practical experience, so we're going to be doing just that. To conclude our lesson today, you will attempt to utilize the Icebolt spell. Remember, don't use this on just anyone."

Gesturing with her arms in a casting motion, Lassar continued. "First, collect the surrounding moisture with the power of Mana. Second, lower the temperature with the power of Mana. Third, create sharp ice fragments by controlling Mana." She forcefully pointed at a training dummy. "Fourth, shoot them to the target by using the force of repulsion. Please use these training dummies; I'd prefer if nobody gets hurt today. Now, let's see you try."

Meara took a deep breath. _All right...let's try this._

She focused on the Mana around her. Unseen power rushed into her awareness, almost with an...eagerness to it. It awaited her command.

 _I feel like I've **done** this before. It's practically second nature!_

She imagined an arrowhead-shaped chunk of ice. _OK, gotta focus, people are staring at me. Lower the temperature…? Shape the ice…?_

A quintet of blue spheres of Mana appeared around Meara, one after another, orbiting her at waist height.

 _I think I did it! Now...send the shards flying…?_

The conjured spikes of ice flew at one of the training dummies just as Meara had willed them to, each striking dead center. She practically squealed with delight. _So simple! This feeling...so familiar somehow! No... This is more than a feeling. I've **done** this before. Maybe not exactly like this...but definitely **some** kind of magic._

Lassar nodded in approval, smiling. "All right! Most of you did that quite well. Very good. Understanding theory is one thing, but connecting your body and will to the force of Mana is something that will only improve with experience." She crossed her arms. "Go ahead and practice on your own, and tomorrow we'll begin a new lecture about manipulating heat with Mana. I hope to see you all then. Class dismissed!"

Meara ran back to her room at the inn, then spent the rest of the day practicing conjuring Icebolts, then releasing the magic without actually casting them, simply reveling in the familiar sensation of holding Mana within her mind, shaping it, and bending it to her will. She kept it up until she was too mentally exhausted to keep doing it, then slumped over onto the bed.

 _I don't know if I can get to sleep tonight! I've definitely reconnected with something from my past... How exactly 'magic' relates to my previous life, and to what extent, I don't know...but I want to to find out..._


	7. Resonance

**Crimson Anima, Chapter 6: Resonance**

* * *

Another day passed for Meara in much the same way as the past few days had. Right after attending the first day's lecture on the properties of the fire element at the school, she went out and practiced using Icebolt until she was too mentally exhausted to focus.

Over and over again, she took took in as much of the Mana around her as she could hold, manifesting five pulsating orbs of magic energy—unfulfilled potential; a quick thought could convert them to sharp icy spikes. Rather than actually use the Icebolts, though, she simply held on to them and let the Mana suffuse through her.

 _It's...intoxicating. I've been drowning in a sea of forgetfulness, and now I've found a single lifeline. I don't want to let it go..._

Lost in the feeling of the magic, Meara lost track of time. Before she really knew where that time had gone, or what she'd done with it, it was dark and she was back in her guest room in the inn, lying in bed, dozing off to sleep.

The next morning, Meara woke up with a pounding headache...

 _Ugh...feels like...something's trying to...punch its way out of my skull…_

The pain in her head pulsed in counterpoint with her heartbeat. She slowly sat up, and the room around her felt like it started spinning.

 _Ooh, why is it spinning? Stop spinning…!_

Meara lost her balance and toppled over onto the floor, landing on her side with a dull thud. The pain intensified, like a pair of hammers in her brain trying to bash their way out of the sides of her skull.

 _Stop it… Stop it… Make it stop!_

Meara struggled to rise to her hands and knees, only to lose her balance and fall over again. She didn't try again, lying on the floor with her eyes closed for several very uncomfortable minutes. The sensation of the room spinning around her slowly faded, along with the throbbing pain.

Still shaken by the experience, she managed to crawl to the door, pulled herself upright at the doorframe, leaned against the wall to get to the staircase, then stumbled down the stairs while leaning on the handrail.

Piaras stared oddly at her. "You feeling all right?"

"I've been better...it'll pass. I, I'll manage..."

Meara trudged over to the dining room and sat down. She barely nibbled at a loaf of bread, not having much appetite after the bout of sickness.

 _What happened to me?_ _Did_ _I...overd_ _o_ _it yesterday...?_ _Some kind of...magic hangover?_

Her head may have cleared, but her stomach still felt unsettled. After barely eating, she went out to gather firewood for her lodging expenses. By the time she was done, she was feeling...almost back to normal, just in time for class.

She reflected on the incident as she walked to the school. _I don't know what brought that on, but I don't want to repeat it. Did I overdo it with the magic?_ _I'd better go easy_ _on it today_ _._

Meara settled onto a stool in the small classroom, just as Lassar was getting started with her lecture.

Looking over the room, Lassar cleared her throat. "Good morning, everyone. Today we're going to continue our study of the Firebolt spell. It is similar in principle to Icebolt, but there are some key differences, which we'll be going over."

Meara listened intently as Lassar went over the differences between Icebolt and Firebolt, namely that instead of getting five separate projectiles, the caster only got one large fireball that grew stronger with more charging, and it grew in strength non-linearly.

She looked around at the rest of the class, and the four other Milletians there today. Two were rather young looking, no more than ten or eleven. They barely seemed to be paying attention at all, as if they didn't really want to be there. A third was...huh? It was the older boy from Ranald's archery class that did almost as well as Meara. He had slightly long messy brown hair and green eyes. The fourth was a girl that looked rather similar to him, the same age, with the same hair color, and the same eyes.

 _Too similar to be a coincidence_ , Meara thought.

"...which is why… Some of you seem bored," Lassar grumbled. "Perhaps you'd prefer that we go outside and have a more practical demonstration, shall we?" She pointed at the door.

The gathered Milletian students shuffled outside, followed by Lassar. She resumed her lecture once everyone was watching. "Now, the first step in learning the Firebolt magic is to create fireballs by using the power of Mana only. The most important part is to concentrate heat into a single point by using Mana."

 _OK, so, like Icebolt but...hot_ , Meara thought. She focused, and tried doing the opposite of what Icebolt required: instead of forcing heat out, drawing heat in. A small floating ball of flames flares to life, orbiting around her. _Is this it?_ _That was easier than I thought._

"As you learn how to quickly adjust the process of absorbing heat by using the…" Lassar stopped mid-sentence and glared at the small ball of flame orbiting Meara. "...I see one of you already has a grasp on how to do it. Well done, Meara, but if I may continue for the others...?"

Meara dismissed the fireball and continued listening halfheartedly. _Takes more Mana, yes. Harder to control, yes. Moves slower, yes. Can we just get on with it?_ _I want to try this..._

To conclude her lecture, Lassar cast her own Firebolt spell, then directed it at once of the training dummies. It struck with a small burst of flame, but did little harm to it. "All right; each of you try it. Please use the training dummies, and not each other. Now, do your best."

At her prompt, Meara once again drew on the surrounding heat, and amplified it into a small sphere. _This seems so natural, even more than Icebolt._ She drew in more Mana to grow the spell to its limit, then launched it…

The unassuming little fireball struck with surprising force, blasting the training dummy into burning pieces.

 _Um...oops?_

The others looked at Meara, dumbstruck to various degrees.

 _Maybe I overdid it? Just a little?_

Lassar looked back and forth between the destroyed training dummy and Meara, not entirely too pleased that one of her students had just showed her up.

"My goodness! Are you sure you're just a beginner, Meara? Even _I_ can't do that."

"Yes... I'm...pretty sure that was the first time I've ever cast that. At least...the first time I remember doing it. Did I do something...wrong?"

"Just...unexpected." The annoyance in Lassar's expression faded. She seemed...intrigued. "When you use magic of one particular element often, you become stronger with it. You seem to already have a...rather strong affinity for fire magic. Maybe you _have_ forgotten something important..."

Lassar put her hand to her chin, pondering for a moment. "...oh, right. Class dismissed. Meara, hold on. I want a word with you. Inside?" She pointed back at the door.

Meara nervously walked back into the classroom, followed by Lassar. When they were alone, Meara turned to face the instructor. "Um, I'm sorry about the training dummy; I'll pay to replace—"

"That's not it, Meara. ...What do you remember about magic?"

"What?"

"Dilys is an old friend of mine. Lately it seems your...condition has had her rather preoccupied. She said that you'd forgotten who you _were_ , but probably could still remember what you could _do_. I suspect you might have been quite a good magician."

"I… I don't know... I honestly don't remember anything from before I was...brought to Erinn. Maybe I was. I just don't know… But casting magic does seem...familiar. Like...second nature."

"Well, I can tell that much; you seem to do be a natural at it. In fact, you're probably just wasting your time and money coming to my classes, when you could pick this up quicker on your own..."

Lassar walked to the bookshelf in the back of the room, picked out a book, and handed it to Meara. "Here. I'll lend you this." It was a book called _'_ _Basics of Lightning Magic: the Lightning Bolt.'_ "Since you picked up Firebolt before I even finished explaining it, I wouldn't be surprised if you get this one right away too. Just bring it back when you're done."

Meara accepted the book and put it away. "Thanks… I'll have a look at it."

"I'll bet you pick it up right away. Also, there's something else I'll ask of you..." Lassar crossed her arms. "You know about Alby Dungeon? Being able to cast spells when you're not in danger is one thing, but you're going to have to learn to use them in the heat of combat, too. I'd like you to attempt to go through the entire dungeon by yourself."

"I'll give it a try...once I've gone over the book."

"All right, then. Good luck."

Meara left the classroom and went back to her room at the inn to read the new book. It went over the properties of natural lightning and how to replicate it on a small scale through manipulating electrical charges with Mana.

 _Just like the thunderstorm a couple weeks ago..._

Meara set the book down and tried focusing on energy as the book described.

 _Hmm, not so easy..._

The Mana obeyed her though, and a ball of pulsing, crackling electricity took shape around her. She added more Mana to it, and soon there were five orbs.

 _Five. Something about how magic works that won't let me go past five charges… But apparently they'll all fire at once. The spells are similar but different..._

Not wanting to repeat the sickness from earlier, Meara went to bed after a few tentative practice castings. The next day, she woke up without a repeat of her earlier sickness.

 _I feel all right today...maybe it **was** just using too much magic?_

After her usual morning routine, Meara traveled north along the path leading out of town. The skittish pack of foxes that regularly prowled the road growled and snarled at her as she passed.

 _The foxes are agitated… Just like the wolves. Even in the short time I've been here, they've gotten noticeably worse._

The guard in black armor barely acknowledged Meara as she walked by. Turning off the road, she walked into what looked like a cave from outside, but on the inside it was a large rectangular room with smoothed floors and walls. In the middle was an altar, adorned with a large statue of a winged woman in a shawl and loose-fitting dress that bared her shoulders and back. She was kneeling, her eyes closed, her hands clasped around a sword.

 _A dungeon… So...I just...drop something on the ground in front of this statue?_

Taking a small gem she'd found earlier from her items, she dropped it on the ground in front of the winged statue...and with a wrenching, disorienting mysterious power, Meara found herself...somewhere else.

 _Ugh...I am never going to get used to that 'teleporting' magic. It seems to be...everywhere in this world. Yet people don't seem to think twice about it. ...So where am I now?_

Meara was in a room similar to the one she had been in, but instead of an entrance leading outside, there was a staircase leading down behind the statue. The air was cold, stale, and smelled of dirt, mold, and smoke from torches, the only source of light.

 _I think...I'm underground now? Looks like there's only one way forward…_

Meara crept down the staircase.

 _I'm...not entirely comfortable with using magic to kill living things… They're...just rats and bats, right? Just...vermin? Nobody will miss them, right?_

Entering a small square room, Meara carefully opened the treasure chest after preparing five Icebolts, bracing for an attack….

Four large mice appeared as the doors of the room slammed shut.

 _What? I'm stuck! Oh...right. I have to...kill everything to move on… It's...it's okay...I can do this. It's okay to kill them…_

She looked down at one of the mice. It looked back at her with a dumbfounded innocent look.

 _IT'S NOT OKAY._

She leaned forward to take a closer look at the mouse staring back.

 _It's kind of cute…_

The mouse snarled and arched its back. Meara leaped back in surprise.

 _O_ _kay_ _, not cute anymore!_

Baring its teeth, the angered mouse charged at Meara. With a shriek, she fired an Icebolt at it, which messily impaled it.

The other three mice took up wary postures.

 _...well, I feel slightly less bad about this now. Slightly._ Turning away from the shredded mouse, she fired her remaining Icebolts at the other mice, reducing them to a bloody mess as well. The doors opened again.

 _I have no choice, though. The doors won't open, unless I go through with the dark dealing of death. It's one thing to defend yourself, but these mice are mostly just...minding their own business. I'm the one intruding here..._

Reluctantly, Meara repeated the process for several more rooms, messily massacring the largely inoffensive vermin that only attacked when provoked, using her new spells.

She reached a large iron door after a while, with a heavy heart, a sour stomach, and a trail of impaled, exploded, and electrocuted rats, bats, and spiders behind her.

 _Just a little more..._

After opening it with the large red key that seemed to fit the comically oversized lock, and walking through, the door slammed shut behind her...locking her in a massive chamber, with a very large maroon spider waiting in the middle of the room.

 _Oh, my. That's...a really, really BIG spider. Um...I don't want to be here anymore! I...I can't go back. The door shut behind me. Um… I guess...I have to kill it..._

Meara starting charging up a fully powered Firebolt spell, nervously trembling.

 _It's me or the spider..._

The spider turned to face Meara, eight beady eyes staring intently at her, its huge fangs clacking and dripping with venom, its pedipalps rubbing together.

 _It sees me! It's coming!_

Meara drew the fires close around her, fanned them as strong as she could make them.

The spider approached slowly, menacingly, its fangs quivering in anticipation of a meal.

 _No. No! GO AWAY!_

Meara flung the Firebolt at the spider from as far away as she could manage. It struck with an explosion; the spider gave an arachnoid shriek of pain, and when the fire and smoke cleared…

 _Eww… I'm gonna be sick...again..._

The spider's head and part of its thorax had been completely blown away, now splattered behind it; bits of charred spider ichor lay strewn about the large chamber. Its body lay flat on the floor, yet its legs were still twitching slightly…

The door at the far end of the chamber opened. Nervously walking around the still-twitching giant spider corpse, her heart pounding from fear, Meara ran for the open door to find another copy of the statue of the winged woman in the far room. She ran up to the statue, leaned against it, then suddenly found herself...elsewhere. Fresh air surrounded her.

She'd made it out.

 _I'm never going to get the sight of **that** out of my head..._

Nauseous and uneasy, Meara trudged up the short staircase out of the dungeon, back out into the evening twilight, then down the hill to the main path leading back to town.

As she stumbled past the guard, Trefor, she was overcome by a sudden wave of nausea and fell to her knees.

"Hey, you don't look so good... You all right, miss?" He walked over to Meara and offered a hand to help her up. She took his hand, and he helped her stand up again.

"No... I almost got eaten by a giant spider in there. I... I've had better days." _I think I'm going to_ _throw up…_ _I..._ _don't feel right at all.._ _._

"Well, glad you made it out. Careful now."

She tried to keep walking, down the trail leading back to down, among the skittish foxes.

After only a few more steps, her vision went white and her feet gave out.


	8. Unnatural Animosity

**Crimson Anima, Chapter 7: Unnatural Animosity**

* * *

Meara came to her senses again in a strange and unexpected place.

 _...this definitely isn't Tir Chonaill. Where is this…?_

It was a white platform floating in an endless sky, at the apex of an impossibly high staircase. It was adrift above a layer of wispy clouds, illuminated by a diffuse glow that seemed to come from every direction.

As Meara rose to her feet, a female figure in a black dress appeared in the middle of the platform, appearing in midair and settling to the ground with a twirl and flourish.

 _It's you...Nao...the one who called me back…_

Nao smiled. "Hello again, Meara. It's been a while, hasn't it?"

Meara looked about, then back at Nao. "Where is this...? How did I get here?"

"Ah. Well...this is the Soul Stream. This is normally where all new souls arrive when they come to Erinn, but...I had to do something a little out of the ordinary to save you. But now that you're properly here, I can bring you to the Soul Stream as well."

Meara turned her gaze downward. "It sounds like I've caused you a lot of trouble already..."

"Don't worry about it. More importantly, how have you been enjoying your new life?"

"It's better than the alternative… And I think I might have found a clue about who or what I used to be..."

Nao's smile diminished a bit. "Perhaps you shouldn't worry too much about that. Why not simply enjoy your second chance at life for the time being? I feel it would be more important to focus on...what you want to become. You don't have to let your past define you."

Meara said nothing for a few moments, thinking to herself. _She has a point… I do need to find some direction in this new life. But not knowing is still going to gnaw at me forever..._

Nao spoke up again, changing the subject. "You look a bit worse for wear. Perhaps you'd like to take this opportunity to be reborn?"

"Haven't I already been reborn?"

"Not in the way I'm suggesting. As a Milletian, a soul from another world, you can periodically renew your mind and body, making it easier for you to learn new things. And if you'd like, you can even change the way you look, to some extent."

"I...think I'll pass on changing anything. I have so much to adjust to here...I'd at least like to keep _myself_ familiar, especially when I'm just starting to get used to this."

Nao giggled. "I see your point. Still, would you like to try being reborn again?"

Meara put a hand to her chin. _Hmm...if it'll help with the aches, pains, and sickness I've been feeling lately…_ "Okay...if it won't change anything about me, then why not?"

Nao clasped her hands together. "Very well. I'll be watching over you. We'll meet again. Until then, take care."

Meara's vision went white again, and for a brief moment she lost the feeling in her body, as if she had been back in the void and had never been saved…

...and then the world she knew returned, along with her senses. She found herself standing on the path leading north from Tir Chonaill, with Trefor waving his hand in front of her eyes, trying to get her attention.

"What...? I'm back...? ...you can stop that now."

Trefor put his hand down. "You sure you're all right? You just spaced out there for a moment. Should I take you to Dilys?"

She nodded. "...I think I'll be okay now." _Huh._ _Did all that happen_ _in the span of only a few seconds? This is a little too strange for me to wrap my head around._

Meara looked down at herself. _Nothing seem_ _s_ _different… But I fe_ _el_ _...better. Certainly not about to throw up…_ She stretched her arms a bit. _Even_ _my_ _stiff muscles_ _feel better again_ _._

Trefor sighed. "Well, if you insist. Don't push yourself too hard. Back to work then...keeping you safe from these annoying foxes..." He grumbled as he turned away to walk back to his post. "I hate my job. Only for you, Dilys…!"

As he trudged off, Meara turned to head back to the inn. _All this teleporting. It's like this world_ _always wants you to be somewhere else._

A few Milletians were gathered in the square; one was playing music on a lute while the others listened. Playing rather poorly, at that. Meara briefly paused to listen, but the off-key music failed to hold her interest for long.

 _Either the song itself_ _i_ _s terrible, or the_ _y_ _need_ _more_ _practice_ _. Why is it called a "square," anyway? It's a round hole in the ground..._

As usual, Piaras was at the inn's counter, though at the moment he was preoccupied writing something down into a book of some sort. He barely looked up and nodded to Meara as she climbed the stairs to her room, with a bit more spring in her step than usual.

—

The next morning, after breakfast, when Meara set out to go about chopping firewood, she found a middle-aged man in a brown shirt with shaggy hair standing around outside, a heavy pack slung over his shoulder.

Meara paid him little mind at first, at least until she noticed the man watching her at work chopping away at trees with the lumber axe.

 _What's he looking at? I wonder what he's thinking? ...Probably something along the lines of, 'look at those ears, what a freak!'_

She kept on working, but couldn't help but steal a peek back at the man. _He's...kind of handsome. Wait, what am I thinking, he's probably twice my_ _—_

 _Now that I think about it...how old am I, anyway? I...I don't know anymore. I've only been alive in this world for...a month? I have no idea how long I existed before that as a disembodied spirit… My body seems like it's barely reached adulthood. I look...18? This...this is confusing. And awkward. Either he's way too old for me, or way too young. Then again, does age even matter to Milletians? Ugh, stop thinking about this!_

 _Just focus on your work, Meara,_ she muttered to herself, _before you cut something that's not wood._ She picked up the bits of firewood around her and went to another tree.

A moment later, someone behind her spoke.

"Heya. Haven't seen you around here before."

She turned to see the man, standing only a few feet away now.

 _OH NO HE'S TALKING TO ME WHAT DO I SAY?_ "Um, no... I-I'm not."

 _I think my heart skipped a beat…_

He pinched at the air near his head, where, if he'd had pointy ears like hers, the tips of those ears would be. "Not from these parts, are you?"

 _Always my ears. It's the first thing anyone notices. I have half a mind to trim the damn things off, but the other half protests I'd likely just bleed to death for my troubles. Or would I? ...I don't want to find out._

"Ah, sorry if I'm prying," the man said, scratching his hair. "Don't see elves around here often. Or ever, really. You wouldn't happen to be going to Dunbarton today, would you?"

"Actually, yes, I-I'd planned on it. How'd...how'd you guess?" _I'm so nervous!_ _All_ _the progress I'_ _ve_ _made in speaking_ _better, and it_ _all vanishes_ _around him!_

"Just a hunch." He shrugged. "Be careful on the road, then. The bears are restless today for some reason. Sorry if I bothered you. Take care, miss."

He turned away and walked back towards the inn. Meara breathed a sigh of relief.

 _Calm down,_ _it's over.._ _._

She finished chopping the requested firewood and dropped it off at the inn.

"There you go. Um, Piaras, I'm going to try to walk to Dunbarton today. I'll be back tonight."

He looked up from his ledger. "All right, Meara. Mind the bears."

 _Wait, you too?_

"Bears? What about the bears? How do you know?"

"Just a feeling. Careful out there. I'll see you tonight."

 _Bears, huh? Maybe this isn't such a good idea…_

When Meara stepped back outside, she found that the traveler had set out a variety of odd things on an old leather sheet he'd spread out on the ground in front of the inn.

 _Guess he's a merchant of some sort?_

Crossing the bridges across Adelia Stream, Meara followed the road south out of town. The long, straight, narrow road ran through a valley, leading down out of the mountains.

After a half hour of uneventful walking, with nothing to see but trees, dogs, sheep, and a half-rabid wolf she drove off with a Lightning Bolt spell, Meara came to a logging camp, with a nearby Moongate.

...An abandoned logging camp, from the looks of it. Abandoned in a very big hurry, and very recently. Tools had been left lying about all over the place.

 _What happened here? ...was that a growl?_

Meara turned to her left and saw a massive black bear standing uncomfortably close. It growled.

It wasn't alone. Other smaller bears stood in a group behind it…

 _Oh dear. That's...a lot of bears. And that one bear in the middle is a really, really big bear._

 _Please don't notice me. Please don't notice me._

 _...I should have listened._

The bear roared at Meara.

 _Time to run!_

Meara turned and ran as fast as she could. The giant bear gave chase.

It was faster.

 _Uh-oh. That really big bear is a...really fast bear. Faster than me. Why am I not getting away? That's not right!_

It was upon her.

 _Oh, this is gonna hurt._

With its powerful paws, it swatted her to the ground as she screamed in terror. Its claws tore into her back.

 _Not like this. Not like this! So much pain!_

Darkness overcame her.

—

Meara came to her senses just past sunset, surrounded by blood spatters in the dirt. Her blood. The bears were gone.

 _Ow… Ugh… I guess I'm lucky the bears were content with merely mauling me, and not having me for dinner..._

Meara dragged myself to the Moongate with her arms, unable to stand.

 _You win today, bears. For now...I need to get to Dilys..._

Slumping onto the Moongate, staining the pure white stone with her blood, she thought of one of its its counterpart gates near Alby Dungeon, and felt the world around her _lurch_ as the arcane magic of the Moongates sent her to the place she had envisioned.

Crawling a few steps down the hill towards town, she passed out again...


	9. In Theory

**Crimson Anima, Chapter 8: In Theory**

* * *

After being nearly slashed to ribbons by a giant bear, Meara had barely made it through the nearest Moongate, and a few feet further, before passing out again from blood loss. She lay on the road leading past Alby Dungeon, eyes closed, barely conscious. Pain shot through her sides, the gashes in her flesh burned, and her chest gurgled with every laborious breath.

 _Can't move...my body… Am I...going to die like this?_

She heard footsteps approaching, then a man's voice. "Hey, are you all right? What the...? What _happened_ to you?! ...I'd better get you to Dilys."

She felt arms reaching under her, then the sensation of being lifted off the ground, a rhythmic movement; she was being carried.

Another familiar voice; a woman this time. "Trefor, this really isn't a good time... Huh? Who's that? Meara? Goodness, what happened to her?!"

"I don't know. She stumbled out of the Alby Moongate, all slashed up like this, and collapsed. She's alive; barely."

"Get her in here, quick!"

Again Meara felt the sensation of being moved, then lowered onto a soft surface.

"I'll leave it to you."

The sound of a door closing faintly registered in Meara's mind, as if far away.

"Good lord, girl, what did you get yourself into? Hold on, I'll get these wounds taken care of. It's a good thing you Milletians seem to be immortal, or you'd probably be dead already..."

Meara's consciousness faded, along with the pain…

—

Meara woke up again in a familiar place, but from an unfamiliar perspective: the downstairs bed in the Healer's House in Tir Chonaill. She could feel that her torso and arms were wrapped in bandages. She tried to get up, but had no strength left in her; she tried to speak, but only managed a dull groan.

Dilys looked up from her desk. "Oh, you're awake? You were out cold for at least sixteen hours..."

Meara turned her head to face Dilys; it was all she could manage.

"Don't try to move yet. Just rest."

Dilys stood up, plucked a small vial filled with a bright red liquid from the cabinet, pulled out the stopper, walked over to the bedside, and held it to Meara's mouth.

"Here. Drink this. It'll help you recover your strength."

Meara took a long sip of the red liquid; a recovery potion, now that she recognized it. It tasted bitter and vaguely...metallic? It did seem to have an effect, though; she felt some strength returning to her arms and hands.

"Better?" Dilys asked. Meara nodded.

"I can guess what happened," Dilys continued. "You need to be more careful out there, especially when you're not even armed. Wild animals of all sorts are growing more hostile by the day. Even dogs and cats seem like they're turning feral on us…"

"I'll...try and be more careful," Meara said weakly. _Whatever was in that bottle, it tastes awful, but it seems to work..._

"All right, then. You're free to go as soon as you feel well enough to get up and walk out." Dilys sat down at her desk again, opening the book to where she had left off. "...and you might want to go see Malcolm. Your outfit was kind of...well, just hope he can do something with it."

Meara sat up, looked down at her clothes, and grimaced. They were slashed and bloodstained; definitely not presentable.

 _Looks like I'll need something new sooner rather than later..._

—

Malcolm shook his head. "Sorry, Meara; I think it's a lost cause."

Meara sighed, turning to the clothing rack in Malcolm's shop. "Figures. Well, I was saving for something new, anyway. Let's see..."

She looked over the outfits in stock. One caught her eye; a pale blue short dress and sky blue stockings with a dark blue jacket.

"I'll take this one," she said, handing over a pouch of gold coins.

Malcolm took the pouch and handed her the outfit. "There you go. Take care of it, now."

—

Piaras shot Meara an odd glare as she limped her way into the inn.

"...what happened, exactly?" he asked.

"Bears."

"Bears?"

"Really big bears. ...I'm going to bed."

"...okay. Your room's still ready...you did work for it, after all, even though you weren't here last night."

"Thanks..." She struggled up the stairs, leaning on the handrail, went into her room, and toppled over onto the bed, falling asleep in moments.

—

Meara woke up well before sunrise for once, after a nightmare of being chased by bears. At least she felt a lot better now, after a bit of sleep. Changing into her new outfit, she crept downstairs. The lamps were turned down low, and Piaras wasn't at the counter for once.

 _So he does sleep sometimes after all_ , she thought.

Stepping outside, she crossed the bridges and approached the nearby Moongate, still aglow and humming with power. The glowing blue Ladeca stone floated in the air, chained to the gate to keep it from flying away.

To use the Gates, one had to step on it while envisioning the destination gate and its surroundings. Of course, that meant to go to any particular Gate, one had to travel to that Gate the long way and remember what it looked like...

 _Usually it's shut down by the time I get up… I wonder if there's any way they could be kept active longer?_

Meara looked up at the sky. The eastern horizon was tinged orange and blue with dawn's first light, with a slim crescent Ladeca hanging low above the cliffs, pointing towards the unseen sun. In the west, the blood-red orb of Eweca was sinking behind the mountains. The sight of the infinite dark above unnerved her somehow; the few glimmering stars in the sky did little to dispel the feeling that the very sky above was trying to swallow her whole...

 _Reminds me too much of...being dead..._

Shrinking away from the obliviating vault of the empty heavens, Meara went back to the inn, returned to her room, and tried unsuccessfully to get back to sleep, to no avail.

—

After breakfast and gathering firewood, Meara went to the school. She had a question on her mind that needed an answer. Walking into the classroom, she found Lassar sitting at her desk, reading a book. Lassar looked up at Meara when she noticed someone walking in.

"Oh, Meara. How're you doing today? I heard you got into a bit of a scrape. Are you all right now?"

"Better; thanks... I've been wondering. Is it possible for Moongates to work during the day? What makes them work, anyway?"

"That's...a long story." Lassar got up and walked to the bookcase, picking a volume from the shelves. "Here, I'll lend you this. It'll explain it better than I can."

She handed Meara the book, titled 'The Origin of Moon Gates.'

"Bring it back when you're done reading that, okay?"

"Sure. Shouldn't take me long."

Meara went outside, sat on one of the training ground's wooden benches, and read the book in one sitting.

 _I can't help but feel books should be longer._

It lived up to its name, surely enough. Years ago, a wizard named Jabchiel, who had sided with the Fomors, summoned meteors from Ladeca to rain destruction on Erinn in the final battle of the war that had sent the Fomors into retreat underground. Only the self-sacrifice of the heroic wizard Mores stopped the world from being bombarded into a lifeless wasteland.

After that tragedy, it was found that those Ladeca rocks could warp space itself. At night they absorbed Mana from Eweca and began to float as they warped space around them, trying to return to Ladeca. The gates were built from the leftover stones scattered around Uladh.

 _So, they absorb the extra Mana at night and that's what lets them warp space… If it all takes is a bit of Mana, then is there any way to provide it during the day?_

Meara went back into the classroom, and handed the book back to Lassar.

"So, the Gates only work at night because there's not enough Mana around to power them without the extra Mana from Eweca?"

Lassar re-shelved the book. "Essentially, yes. The ambient Mana left over during the daytime isn't quite enough to activate them. It doesn't take much more, so they reactivate as soon as Eweca rises."

"So, if it were possible to, say...collect extra Mana during the night somehow, and feed it back into the Gates during the day, couldn't they be kept working all the time?"

Lassar raised an eyebrow suspiciously. "Well, you see... Hmm.… Actually...I can't think of any reason why that wouldn't work. The question is, how could it be done? I'm...not sure. You know what? I'm going to send your idea to a few people I know and see what they think of it. Maybe it's time for another look."

Meara crossed her arms in front of her. "Certainly, I can't be the first person who's suggested this..."

"Well, no. It's come up every now and then since they were first built, but you'd have to find a way to store and then re-release Mana in its pure form. Not even the Druids ever figured out a good way of doing that. Maybe the Alchemists can figure something out…" Lassar's expression brightened. "You know, this kind of creativity really shows promise. Let me give you something..."

Meara watched curiously as Lassar took a quill pen and a sheet of paper out of a drawer, took a few minutes to write something down on the paper, put it into an envelope, then handed it to her.

"You're going to Dunbarton, right? Go by the school down there and give this letter to Stewart. He's the magic instructor there. Let's just call that a...letter of recommendation."

"Um...thank you." Meara accepted the envelope and put it away. "...there won't be giant angry bears today, right?"

Lassar chuckled a bit. "I think you'll be safe today. Still, you never know these days. Just keep an eye out." She went back to her desk, sat down, and picked up her book. "Good day."

Walking back outside, Meara looked up the sky, a calming gentle blue dome, with a few wispy clouds that didn't seem nearly as threatening as the ravenous black void of night. The sun was a bit more than halfway to its zenith.

 _It's not quite midday yet. If I start now, I can at least get to Dunbarton and have a bit of time to look around town before I need to come back..._

—

Meara set out once again down the long narrow valley to Dunbarton. It was a long and tedious three hour walk, but at least she wasn't accosted by giant bears this time.

The logging camp had a couple of workers today cleaning up the scattered tools, and pondering over the large patch of bloodstained dirt. Meara didn't want to dwell on the fact that all that blood had been hers.

Eventually, Meara left the valley and came to a wide open plain. It was at a much lower elevation and quite a bit warmer here. In the distance she saw a walled city at the end of the tree-lined dirt road.

At long last she walked through the gates of Dunbarton.

 _It's already late afternoon, so I'm not going to have much time to look around before nightfall... I guess I should at least look for the magic school?_

There were dozens of Milletians in town. Many of them gave her strange looks as they passed; it was hard not to notice someone with long pointy ears when nobody else had them…

 _It's hard to avoid undue attention when you're not even human..._

Aside from a few people sitting on rugs in the town square trying to sell things to passerby, what caught her attention first was a girl with brown hair and eyes, wearing glasses and a pink dress, standing next to a tray with books.

 _Books? A bookstore?_

When Meara came up to the girl selling books, the spectacled girl bowed slightly in greeting. "Hello! Are you looking for any books in particular? If I don't have it, I can order it for you…!"

"Not really. Just browsing." When Meara turned to the other girl, her eyes went wide.

"Um, are you a..."

"Yeah... I'm an elf."

"Oh. Sorry. I'd just...never seen one. I didn't mean to stare, I just..."

"It's fine. I'm used to it by now…" Meara picked three books out of the tray. "How much for these?"

"That'll be a hundred and twenty gold."

Meara divided out the necessary coins and handed them to the girl. She put them in a pouch, and smiled. "Thanks. Come again!"

"I think I will. Say, uh, do you know where the magic school is?"

"Oh, sure! It's that building right behind you with the red roof. Tell Stewart that Aeira said 'hi', would you please?"

"Um...sure." Meara put the books in her bag, to read later when she got back to the inn, then turned and climbed the staircases leading up to the large school building.

The door was standing open. Meara warily entered the large building and looked around. A statue of a horse stood in the middle of the main hall, with two staircases leading up to a second floor. Two doors led left and right.

She ascended the left staircase quietly, looking into the left door first.

Inside was...a library. Dozens of books sat upon shelves in tall bookcases. Reading tables and benches were set up along the sides of the room. At the far end of the large room, there was a desk and a blackboard.

 _Wow...so many books! ...I can see myself spending a lot of time in here._

Still, there was the other room. Forcing herself to turn away from the siren song of the vast collection of books, she crossed the upper level and peeked into the other room. It was a lecture hall, much like the classroom at the school in Tir Chonaill.

Within it, a man in a red and black robe with tangled brown hair was reading through an old tome. He looked up at seeing someone at the door, adjusting his glasses as if he didn't quite trust what he was seeing.

He cleared his throat. "Hello, miss; are you looking for something?"

"Um, excuse me? Are you Stewart?"

"Yes, that would be me. May I help you?

She stepped fully into the room, taking the envelope from her possessions and handing it to Stewart. "Hello... I'm Meara. Lassar asked me to give you this…"

He took the letter, adjusted his glasses again, and slowly read it. As he finished, a smile crossed his face, and he laughed a bit as he set it aside.

"It seems Lassar thinks rather highly of you… Well, she's an old friend of mine, and I trust her judgment. Meara, was it? Why don't you have a seat? Let's discuss your situation."

—

It was well past sunset. Meara walked out the west gate of Dunbarton, immediately spotting the Moongate just outside town.

 _So...other Milletians remember their lives before they came here...why don't I?_

She had conversed with Stewart for a few hours. Meara had elucidated her experiences in Errin over the past month that she could remember. Stewart found it curious that she had no memory of anything before that. Other Milletians he'd talked to all seemed to remember clearly where they'd come from and what their lives had been like, though they all seemed to come from a world very different from this one...

She stopped before the Moongate, looking around the surroundings and remembering the details, so she would be able to come back from the gate near Tir Chonaill. Just to be sure, after stepping on the Moongate, she went back and forth between the two gates a couple of times.

 _Good. I can get back now! But only at night. Hmm..._

Returning to the Moongate just south of Tir Chonaill, Meara trudged along the uphill path to cross the bridges to reach the inn.

 _I wonder what kind of classes he'll have..._

When Meara had explained that magic was the one thing she seemed to be any good at, and that she felt it was the key to her past, Stewart had agreed to teach her what he could and help cultivate her talent with it.

However, a problem now occurred to her…

 _If I start taking classes at Dunbarton, I'll…_

 _Either I'm going to have to start waking up a lot earlier to use the Moongate before dawn, or I'm going to have to make that long walk every day...!_

 _I hope it's worth it..._


	10. Connections

**Crimson Anima, Chapter 9: Connections**

* * *

Meara set down a pile of firewood in the back corner of the inn's dining room. "There you go. I've gotta run." She turned and made to leave.

"Thanks, Meara," Piaras replied, not looking up from his ledger.

 _Time to walk_ _three_ _hours to Dunbarton again_ , she thought, crossing the bridges across Adelia Stream. For two weeks now, she'd run down to Dunbarton every morning, coming back to the inn by Moongate in the evenings.

 _I knew what I was getting into, but—wait, what's this?_

Three people were near the idle Moongate, doing...something to it. Two men in matching brown uniforms seemed to be setting up what looked like pedestals to the sides of the gateway. The older third man, in a white robe with bushy gray hair, seemed to be directing the work. Nearby lay a pile of crates, some of which were lying open.

"There. The connection's been established, Berched." one of the workers said to the older man.

Curiosity getting the better of her, Meara walked over for a closer look.

"Excuse me...what's going on here?"

The older man turned to look at Meara when when he heard her speak.

"Oh, hello! We're installing these Mana Condensers onto the Moongate." He pointed at one of the crates, which contained a pair of crescent moon-shaped crystalline objects. "They'll gather extra Mana at night, and use it to power this Moongate throughout the day. Quite exciting work, if I say so myself."

Meara's eyes went wide. "So...the Moongate will always be on?" _Is this because of what I discussed with Lassar a couple weeks ago?_

"Precisely. Our initial tests with the Moongates near Tailteann were a great success, so we're going to be enhancing every Moongate in Uladh. It'll take a while, but we'll get to them all...eventually. If you'll excuse me, now, my dear, this is the most important step..."

The two workmen picked the crystalline moons out of the crate, carrying them to the pedestals.

"Oh… I'll leave you to it, then."

"Good day." He turned back to the workmen. "All right, now to mount the condensers. Be careful with those, they took hours to synthesize..."

Meara walked away from the gate and across the south meadow, heading for the long road south to Dunbarton.

 _Wow. All this started with an offhand question born out of laziness, and now here it is actually happening. If they can actually do it though, it'll drastically change the world._

 _I really need to be more careful with what I suggest._

Her line of thought was disrupted by a growl from the trees on the side of the road. She turned to face in the direction it had come from, and saw a wolf standing among the trees, its teeth bared in a snarl.

 _Wolf!? Stay calm, stay calm…_ She channeled Mana into a Lightning Bolt spell. A sphere of energy flickered to life, orbiting around her.

"Bad dog. Go away." Her voice was far from calm.

The wolf barked loudly, then charged at Meara.

"You brought this on yourself..."

She unleashed the spell on the charging wolf. With a clap of thunder and a yelp from the enraged canine, it toppled over mid-stride and fell unconscious.

 _This has been happening more and more lately,_ she thought, hurrying away from the still-twitching disabled wolf. _Maybe this'll be the last time I have to take this three-hour walk..._

—

A while later, Meara reached the logging camp. Two workers were smoothing out the sides of a long log that had sharpened into a point at each end, and a large pile of similarly prepared logs lay nearby.

Near the large tree in the middle of camp, two people seemed to be arguing; one a rugged-looking man with a beard wearing a raccoon cap, the other a tall woman with brown hair. Both wore plain and practical brown clothing.

As Meara passed, she couldn't help but overhear their raised voices. _Do these big ears help me hear better? I have no way to tell..._

"Look, Alexina, I have every intention to fill your order, but at the rate we're going it's probably going to take us another four weeks to finish it," the man shouted.

"What do you mean it's going to take another month? What's the problem now?!" The tall woman glared at the man, hands on her hips.

"Really; I'm sorry, but we're not going to be able to get it done any sooner than that." He waved an arm, gesturing at still-bloodstained patches of dirt. "That bear attack wrecked my operation! Half my men got badly torn up, a few got killed, and now most of 'em are too scared of it happening again to come back to work."

"Ooh! My expedition's never going to get started at this rate! First Erskin Bank withdraws my funding, and now this?"

"Hey, you'll get your three hundred palisade stakes, you're just gonna have to wait for 'em! I don't have time for this. If you want it done faster, get off my back and find me some new lumberjacks! Preferably some real men!"

The man turned away, picking up a lumber axe and storming off into the woods.

 _Looks like the hostile wildlife is giving everyone a bad time._ There was nothing natural about this rampant hostility from the creatures of the forest, as evident from the Fomorian scrolls being found everywhere. _It's getting worse. This can't go on..._

—

By the time Meara reached Dunbarton, her feet hurt, her legs hurt, and her back felt stiff and sore. She walked into the school, trudged up to the second floor lecture hall, and sighed with relief when she sat down on one of the stools.

 _I guess I'm early_ , she thought. Stewart wasn't in the room. _Well, at least I can rest a bit. I must really be out of shape. Every day I feel worse at the end of these walks than I did the day before…_

Meara picked up the book on the table in front of her, an old tome on potions, and browsed through it for a few minutes until she heard footsteps on the stairs. It was a book on the basics of formulating potions from medicinal herbs. She put the book down again as Stewart entered the room.

"Ah, interested in potions, are you?" He adjusted his glasses. "It might be a good idea for you to take up potion making, actually. Ever give much thought to it?"

"...a little. Um...I finished the assignment you gave me."

"I'll take your word for it. Well, then, here's what I'd like to have you do next. I want you to go through a longer dungeon. For example, Math Dungeon northeast of town. It'll serve two purposes: to give you practice managing your Mana for a prolonged period, as well as being able to focus on casting in dangerous situations..."

"I see..." _Right. When the bear attacked me, all I could think to do was run..._

"Also...it would be best if you didn't go there alone," Stewart continued. "Fomors aren't going to politely wait for you to cast spells, and neither will a maddened wild animal. Sometimes you just need someone else there to cover you while you're casting."

"...I can't disagree with that…but...who would I be going with?"

"You'll just have to make some friends then. That's also part of the assignment." Stewart chuckled. "That's all I'll ask of you for now. As usual, take all the time you need, and let me know when you've done it."

"...it might take a while."

"I'll wait. Be careful out there." He turned away, dismissing Meara.

—

Meara sat down under the tree at the corner of Dunbarton's crossroad, watching the world go by.

 _...make some friends, huh? He made that sound a lot easier than I think it's going to be. Did I ever even have any friends in my...previous life?_

She sat watching people go about their business, most of them other Milletians, while she pondered the task that had been given to her.

 _I may have been brought to this world...but I don't feel like I have any connection to it. And I'm not sure how to make one..._

Dozens of Milletians came and went here every day, talking, playing music, practicing crafts, even sparring. For all that was going on, though, Meara was just sitting on the sidelines, feeling like a spectator to the everyday life around her.

A mischievous-looking young man, and a woman with a dog on a leash, both dressed in white, came walking down the road. The woman was clearly in a hurry and looked rather irritated with the man following her.

"Would you please hurry, Merlin? I'm going to be late for my concert," the woman snapped.

The young man followed, flailing his arms around in an attempt to strike a triumphant pose while keeping pace. "No worries, you'll get there with plenty of time! There's new upgraded Moongates! They work all day! I helped with the idea, you know? And I did it all for your sake, Starlet!"

"Really now?" She sighed, looking down at her dog. "Come along, boy, let's see these fancy new Moongates this big jerk came up with."

"Aww. You love that dog more than me!"

"Correct."

"Oh, come on, I change the world for you and you don't even care? At least you can admire my work! Hey, wait up!"

 _..._ _What was_ that _all about?_ Meara thought. _All_ his _idea to upgrade the Moongates, huh? Whatever. I can live with not getting credit for them, as long I get to use them. Walking three hours a day is wearing m_ _y shoes_ _out fast._

Meara sat a while longer, watching various people go about their business.

 _I don't feel like I belong here. I'm...different. I wish I didn't feel that way. I wish I was just...normal._

Two Milletians, a boy and girl in their late teens, walked out of the healer's house. They had similar faces, and their hair and eyes were the same colors. They were arguing with one another. Their bickering resolved as they drew closer, walking in Meara's general direction.

"...wouldn't have happened if there had been someone else there with us. I really think we need a third person," the girl protested. She was in a green and teal-colored martial artist suit with a black ribbon wrapped around her waist.

"Oh, fine, have it your way, sis," replied the young man with her, clad in gray leather armor over white clothing. "Let's see...wait a minute...is that…?"

He looked right at Meara, then pointed at her. "Look over there! It's her; that elf from magic class! Let's ask her. She'll be awesome!"

Meara's eyes went wide. _W_ _ait, what? Does he mean me?_

"Huh? Wow, I think it _is_ her," the girl replied. "...and I think she heard us."

Having been called out, Meara stood up as the pair approached, staring at them. A spark of recognition fired in her small collection of memories.

 _Ah...I remember them. They were at Lassar's lecture on Firebolt when I wrecked the training dummy. And he was at the archery lesson…_

"...well, you go ask, then," the girl said, in a quieter voice. She nudged him forward.

 _They seem surprised I overheard. Huh. Maybe I_ do _hear better than humans..._

Once they realized Meara had overheard them, and knew that she knew they were talking about her, they closed the distance and walked up to her. The young man extended a hand in greeting.

"Um, hello there. Meara, was it? We were wondering, uh, would you, um, like to...?" the boy said, fuddling with his words.

The girl pushed him aside and continued for him. "Ugh, let me do it! Hi. I'm Vivian. This is my brother, Devin. We were going to go explore Math Dungeon, and we wanted a third person to come along with us. Safety in numbers, you know?"

Devin shot her an annoyed look.

"So Devin spotted you and thought to ask. Or rather, he was gonna ask, but he gets tongue-tied around pretty girls," she added, jabbing her brother in the ribs with her elbow.

"I do not!" he fumed.

Meara raised an eyebrow. _Pretty? I'm...pretty? I wouldn't know..._

"Anyway," Vivian continued, "you're good with magic, right? Since I mostly just hit things, and Devin's an archer, you'd...you know, balance things out?" She shrugs.

"I guess so..." Meara responded, not sure what exactly to make of these two.

"We'll keep things off you so you can focus on casting," Devin added, finding it in him to speak properly. "Don't worry, we'll keep you safe."

 _Well, Stewart did want me to go to Math Dungeon with other people, and here I was fretting about how to go about it, but this sounds like just what I needed..._

"Sure. Why not?" Meara said.

 _This might be an interesting experience._


	11. Into The Depths

**Crimson** **Anima, Ch** **apter** **10** **:** **Into The Depths**

* * *

Meara walked together with her two new companions to Math Dungeon. She didn't even notice that she walked quite a bit faster than humans, until she looked back and saw the two siblings having to keep up a jog to match her normal walking pace.

Vivian called out, "Eager much? Slow down, would you?"

"Sorry, I can't help it; this is...just how I normally walk…" Still, to avoid a fuss, she slowed down to match their pace.

The dungeon's entrance was a small unassuming stone building surrounded by a high stone brick wall. Of course, the vast majority of it was underground. The three entered, and a polished granite statue of a winged woman standing vigil over the entrance awaited them.

 _I read this in one of Piaras' books, didn't I? It's a representation of the goddess Morrighan. They seal the dungeons..._

The three stood upon the smooth stone square before the Goddess statue, looking up at its impassive gaze.

"Ready?" Devin asked.

Meara nodded. _I suppose answering in the negative wouldn't make a difference._

He tossed a gold coin down at their feet, and Meara again experienced the lurching and disorienting feeling of reality shifting around her. When the surroundings settled back into place, the three were in a similar room, but deep underground, and the only way out was a staircase behind the statue that led even deeper.

"Here goes nothing," Vivian mumbled.

The three carefully descended the stairs, and entered a network of rooms lit by candlelight from chandeliers hanging from the high domed ceilings, giving everything an unnatural orange hue. The air felt cold and smelled stale.

Apparently her two companions had access to the same kind of unseen storage space Meara herself could call up at will; suddenly Devin was holding a bow and arrows, and Vivian bore a broadsword and a small shield. They looked at Meara as if expecting her to similarly arm herself.

 _...um...I've got nothing._

"Uh...didn't you bring any weapons?" Devin asked.

"...No," Meara replied, "I guess I'm okay with archery, but…" She conjured and prepared a Firebolt. "I'm not really any good with anything but magic."

A short, squat purple humanoid with long ears and a pointy nose in the next room charged at them, while screaming a wordless battle cry. It brandished a crude wooden club and small wood buckler.

 _A kobald!?_

Startled, Meara slung the Firebolt at the kobald. The fireball blasted the creature backward a good six feet as it gave out a death cry. Its scorched and blackened body hit the stone floor with a light thud.

"Whoa," Vivian exclaimed. "...Good enough."

Meara took a deep breath, grimacing at her handiwork.

 _I don't like having to hurt things… I_ _t really bothers me to attack harmless creatures that aren't hurting anyone._ _But if I have to_ _defend_ _myself...maybe I can live with it.._ _._

"Well, they probably know we're here now," Devin said, as he readied an arrow. "Let's go. Try and stay back, and pick 'em off as you can. We'll try and hold their attention."

Meara nodded. "Okay… Sorry if I'm being a burden. I was such a screw-up in Ranald's classes that he'll probably never want to teach another elf again." She prepared another Firebolt as they ventured forth.

"It's fine," Vivian reassured. "You just need some more practice."

They passed through one empty room and into another. The way forward in the next room was barred with an obviously locked door, and a treasure chest sat waiting nearby—opening it would summon Fomors, one bearing a key needed to proceed further.

"Here goes," Devin warned, as he opened the chest. Five more kobalds appeared from seemingly nowhere, and the doors leading out of the room slammed shut.

 _Again, with the teleporting. Does nobody find this odd?_

One of them sized Meara up and raised a club, moving towards her. She let loose with her prepared Firebolt, with predictably deadly results. Another crumpled over dying with an arrow in its chest from Devin. Vivian dispatched the other three all at once with an impressive-looking spinning attack.

The doors slid open again. One of the slain kobolds had dropped a key, obviously for a door later on. After her experience with Alby, Meara had an idea how this was going to work.

"See? We can handle it together," Vivian said. She picked up the key and put it away.

Meara looked around at the fallen humanoids. _If they're going to be coming_ _at us_ _in groups_ _like this_ _, maybe I should stick with Icebolt?_ _I might have to deal with two or three at once._

"So far, so good," Devin added.

* * *

And so it continued, room after room. The three were always outnumbered when new kobalds appear, but a few quick Icebolts from Meara evened the odds. Whenever passive rats and bats appeared, she left it to the others, saying she was conserving her Mana, though really she just didn't have the heart to hurt something that didn't fight back.

After maybe thirty rooms and hallways, a kobald appeared with a bow and arrows, along with five of the more durable purple-skinned club-wielding kobalds.

Meara fired off two Icebolts into the nearest kobald, impaling it through the chest and abdomen. It fell over sideways, not moving. Another kobald left over its fallen companion club raised to strike, charging at Meara, and it took her remaining three charges to stop it.

She quickly looked for more threats. A kobold lay dying with an arrow in its chest, two more had been cut down by Vivian's blade. And in the corner, the kobald with the bow was taking aim at Devin, its bow nocked and ready to fire.

"Look out!" Meara shouted. She tried to cast a spell but simply wasn't fast enough.

The kobald fired at Devin and the arrow streaked across the room, striking him in the left thigh.

"No!" Vivian screamed, rushing at the kobald, cutting it down before it could nock another arrow to fire again.

She turned to her brother once the room was clear. "Are you all right?"

He fell to one knee, clutching the wound. "No."

Meara ran over to look, mouth agape in shock. She felt as if she'd been the one shot. "Uhh... We have to pull that out," she said.

"...Yeah," he grimaced. "Make it quick." He closed his eyes, bracing for the pain.

Meara carefully grasped the arrow, giving it a quick tug. Devin winced as she carefully pulled it loose, and more blood followed. The arrowhead was crude, merely a sharpened piece of iron without barbs, and it hadn't penetrated deeply or hit a major blood vessel.

 _This could've been much worse._ Meara tossed the bloody arrow away. "Did you bring any bandages?"

Vivian dug through her items. "Yeah." She took out a roll of bandages and quickly wrapped the now-bleeding wound with it.

"Keep pressure on it," Meara said. She drew in Mana and poured it into a Healing spell. She'd learned it after the bear attack weeks earlier. It seemed like a good idea at the time, though as she'd found the first time she tried using it on her own wounds, healing yourself with it was very...exhausting.

Five shimmering motes of light manifested around Meara. The siblings both looked at her, puzzled. Meara channeled the restorative energy to Devin's wound.

"How do you feel now?" she asked.

Devin prodded at the wound, surprised. "It...it seems...fine? Doesn't even hurt much now... Um...thanks?"

"Was that Healing?" Vivian gasped. "Thank goodness you knew it."

"It...it was the least I could do," Meara stammered. A slight blush colored her pale face. "You should be able to stand now..." She offered Devin a hand to help him stand up. Together with Vivian, they got him back up and standing on both feet again.

"Can you still walk on it?" Vivian asked.

He tested his weight on the healed leg, then took a cautious step. "Seems okay," he said.

"Good, 'cause I wasn't looking forward to hauling you out," Vivian said, clearly relieved.

* * *

The trio proceeded with a lot more caution for the remainder of the dungeon. That wasn't the last archer, and when they appeared, Meara made a point to go after them first.

At last, a kobald dropped a large red key.

In the next room, they found a large ornate door with a comically oversized lock to match the similarly proportioned key.

"Looks like this is the end. Are you both ready?" Devin asked.

Meara nodded.

"Yeah. Let's do this," Vivian replied.

Devin unlocked the door. It slid aside into a gap in the wall with a grinding sound. They warily entered the very large, yet empty chamber that lay beyond, several times larger than any other room in the dungeon.

An uneasy feeling came over Meara. Nothing looked unusual about the room or its adornments, other than the larger scale of the chamber, but a palpable sense of malice filled the chamber...

The air at the far end of the chamber...distorted. A dark cloud of miasma appeared with it. From the umbral murk, three pitch-black spectral hounds, with eyes and mouths of flame, manifested at the far end. The abysmal canines glared at the three intruders, eyeing them as potential prey.

"Giant dogs?!" Vivian gasped.

Their fiery eyes looked over the elf and pair of humans that had dared to venture into their lair. But after sizing them up for a short moment, the three infernal canines...made no move to attack?

The burning eyes of the giant dogs met Meara's gaze. Something...changed. The sensation Meara felt...changed. Rather than malice, it was...fear?

The hellhounds whimpered, cowering submissively, then turned and...ran away, disappearing back from whence they came. The black cloud they emerged from vanished without a trace. All was quiet again.

 _What? ..._ _What just happened?_

"They left? They...ran away? Was that supposed to happen?" Meara asked, confused.

"No...I'm pretty sure that's not normal," Devin replied.

"Whatever, they saved us the trouble! Let's go," Vivian said.

 _No, that was definitely not normal. They were terrified of something, and when they were cowering in fear...they were focusing on **me**. I...don't think Devin and Vivian noticed. What did **I** do?_

Crossing the large chamber, they found a small room with another Goddess statue, and three treasure chests waiting in the back corner.

"I guess that's our reward?" Vivian asked.

"Yeah. I'd say we earned it." Devin answered. "I'll...take that one."

They each opened a treasure chest, but each one only contained a pouch with a few hundred pieces of gold. Claiming their rewards, they turned again to the statue of Morrighan.

"That's our way out. Just touch it," Devin said. He put a hand to the stone statue and vanished.

"I don't think we'd have made it without you. Thanks, Meara," Vivian added, before she too touched the statue and vanished.

Meara glared at the statue, its impassive visage looking back into the chamber.

 _I'll never get used to this_ , she thought, hesitantly raising her hand to the stone. The world around her twisted and her senses reeled. When everything stopped spinning, Meara found herself back in the chamber where it had all started, with Devin and Vivian waiting nearby.

They emerged together from the dungeon's lobby and back under the open sky to find it well past sunset and nearly dark. The light of a gibbous Ladeca low in the east near the bloody orb of Eweca outshone the fading twilight, casting everything in a silvery glow.

"Is it this late already? I should be going," Meara exclaimed.

As she made to leave, Vivian put a hand on her shoulder to stop her.

"We should do this again sometime. Let's keep in touch," Vivan said.

"Um... All right," Meara replied.

"Well, good night, then… And...thanks," Devin said, slapping a palm on his now-healed wound. "This would've ended badly if you hadn't been here with us..."

Meara nodded. "I'm...glad I wasn't a burden, then. Um...good night."

After exchanging farewells for the night, the two siblings headed back towards Dunbarton, as Meara went to the nearby Moongate to return to Tir Chonaill. She felt both physically and mentally exhausted.

Trudging across the bridges, a sense of emptiness came over Meara. For all the danger involved in today's journey into the depths, Meara had enjoyed the...companionship. It had been a feeling, an experience, that she'd never even known she was missing in her life.

 _Maybe I've just made some friends? I hope so..._


	12. Growing Bonds

**Crimson Anima, Chapter 11: Growing Bonds**

* * *

Meara sat on the bridge over Adelia Stream outside the inn; on either side, her two recent new acquaintances Devin and Vivian sat next to her.

"...so you don't remember _anything_?" Vivian asked.

Meara shook her head. "Who I was, my life, my family...it's all gone. I can't remember anything _before_ I arrived here…but I _do_ remember everything since..."

"Wow," Devin gasped. "I can't imagine..."

"I woke up...not knowing anything… For the first few days, I could...barely even walk or speak. I think I'm _still_ trying to get the hang of it..."

Meara looked down at the placidly flowing water below. _Come to think of it, I'm not even sure how I know this language… I have a feeling I used to talk and think in a different one...but I don't remember a bit of it..._

"Could it have been a side effect of coming to Erinn?" Vivian put a hand to her chin. "I mean, I remember our old life. I'm...pretty sure I didn't forget anything when we came here… What about you, Devin?"

"No. I don't think I forgot anything. I mean, nobody remembers every little thing in every day of their life, but I don't think there's any big gaps..."

"So it's just me..." Meara sighed. "Something happened to me, then..."

 _Maybe it was because I was dead_ , she thought. There was in fact one thing she did remember before her arrival in Erinn, something that she hadn't told the two siblings—she had been in a dark empty place, without a body, for a very, _very_ long time….

"Isn't there anything you can do?" Vivian asked.

"Everyone I've asked just says one of two things...give up on it and move on, or...just try everything and hope something jogs my memory..."

"That's...generally how amnesia is dealt with where we're from, too," Devin said, "so I guess things aren't much different here?"

Meara leaned back to lie on the bridge, looking up at the sky. "...I'm still worried, though...what if I never remember?"

Vivian turned to her. "Do you really _need_ to know your past?"

"...it wouldn't _kill_ me to not know...but it'll always leave me feeling...empty. So much of my life missing…"

Meara sat up again. "Then again...even if I _did_ remember my old life...that life is over. I still have to start over again..."

" It's not just you… We're all starting over again here. You, us, and every other Milletian."

Devin smiled. "And you don't have to go about it alone, you know?"

Meara sighed. "...maybe you're right."

* * *

The streets of Dunbarton were still slightly damp from a recent rain. Even at the early hour, townsfolk and Milletians alike were bustling about.

In front of the school, Devin and Vivian stood facing each other, holding wands Meara had lent them, while Meara stood on the steps.

"Okay, on three," Meara said, looking between them. "One...two...three."

Devin cast an Icebolt spell with the wand he held; Vivian cast Firebolt with her wand. As the spells sprang to life around their respective wands, the simultaneous magics intertwined, a bit of fire and ice magic circling both.

"Ooh, it worked!" Vivian exclaimed. "Now what?"

"And it only took six tries," Devin grumbled.

"Once you've used a combined spell, you can do it on your own," Meara said, "but...it's tricky... You basically have to cast them at almost the same time..." She turned her gaze downward for a moment. "Now you need to go use that combined bolt on something."

"Use it?" Vivian asked. "Um...use it on what?"

"Plenty of rats around town lately," Devin said. "I don't think the locals will mind us doing a little pest control."

Wand in hand, glowing blue and orange, he turned to walk down the steps, the other two following.

* * *

"There she is."

While rummaging through her pack, Vivian walked towards a tall black-haired woman using the spinning wheel outside Simon's clothing shop, clad in a short black dress, black stockings, and high-heeled boots.

Meara followed closely. _Wait a minute, haven't I've seen her?_

As they approached, the tall girl turned from her work of carefully cutting sheets of leather into thin straps with a gathering knife. "Oh. Hey, Vivian. Those for me?"

"Yeah." Vivian handed the woman a stack of leather that had been gathered from goblins on a recent trip to Ciar Dungeon.

She took them and set them on the ground next to her. "Thanks!"

"Oh, right..." Vivian looked back at Meara. "Meara, this is Kiandra. I don't suppose you've met?"

"Sort of. Not exactly," Meara said.

"Hey, it's you again," Kiandra said. "From Ranald's class?"

"Wait, you have?" Vivian looked back and forth between them.

"Eh, we talked for a bit...at one of Ranald's training classes. Few weeks ago," Kiandra recalled.

"We're...not really acquainted," Meara added.

Vivian looked back at Kiandra. "Well, this is Meara. She's a friend. Um, she's learning magic." She turned back to Meara. "And this is Kiandra. Another friend of mine. She's either trying to be a tailor...or a blacksmith...I think?"

"Both," Kiandra quipped. "Well, nice to meet you, Meara." She extended her hand to Meara in greeting.

"Um...likewise." She took Kiandra's hand with her own and shook briefly.

Kiandra bent over and picked up the pile of leather. "Well, let's see what you've brought me..." Standing again, she counted the hides. "...okay, fourteen."

"Wasn't a good day for drops," Vivian said.

"That's fine. I'll take what I can get." Kiandra handed Vivian a pouch of gold coins. "Thirty-five hundred."

"Thanks." Vivian took the pouch and put it away. "I'll bring you more when I get 'em."

"Can always use more." Kiandra turned to Meara. "Same for you, Meara. If you get any bits of leather, you can bring them to me and I'll buy them from you. Or just come say 'hi.' I don't bite."

"Yeah, she may look creepy and all, but really, she's nice," Vivian said.

Kiandra glared at Vivian, narrowing her bright red eyes. "I'll pretend I didn't hear that."

* * *

Vivian and Meara watched as Devin took aim with his bow at an archery target set up outside the school at Tir Chonaill. It amounted to little more than a sheet of paper on the side of a hay bale with five concentric circles. The bulls-eye circle was about the size of a clenched fist.

After a moment of carefully lining up his shot, he loosed the arrow. It hit slightly left of a bulls-eye, right on the second circle's outer edge.

"So close!" Vivian exclaimed.

"Almost," Meara said.

He looked back at the disapproving looks of his companions.

"Oh, like you can do better?" he fumed.

"Maybe I can. Let me have a shot at it," Meara asked.

Devin handed Meara the bow and arrows and stepped aside, gesturing with his hands to invite her to take a shot at the target as well.

"Let's see if _you_ can hit the bulls-eye, then," he said.

Meara readied not one but two arrows onto the bow, aimed carefully for several seconds longer than Devin had...and fired both off simultaneously.

The two arrows hit the archery target—not in the bulls-eye circle, but a mere half-inch above and below Devin's own arrow.

"Huh. I guess not," she said, with a wink and a mischievous smile.

Vivian doubled over laughing when she realized what Meara had done.

Devin's jaw dropped when he figured it out himself.

"...wait a minute. You're just showing off now."

"Little bit," she said, nocking two more arrows, then firing them at the target again after aiming for a few seconds. They hit within the bulls-eye circle, just slightly off center.

"Now you're definitely showing off," he grumbled.

"Only when I get the time to aim well. It's a different story if I'm under pressure..."

"If you're such a good shot, though, then why use magic?"

"Archery just...doesn't feel right." Meara sighed, turning her gaze downward. She handed the bow and quiver back to Devin. "But magic is...familiar, somehow..."

"Wait; you said you didn't remember anything, didn't you?" Vivian asked.

"Not specifically, no… Some things just... _feel_ familiar. It's not a...conscious memory, it's more like...something you've done so much, you don't even have to think about it?"

"Yeah, I've heard about that," Devin pondered. "With some people, even though they lost their memory, they still retained their skills… I guess it's something similar."

* * *

The three friends sat by the lake's edge along Emain Macha's southernmost avenue, fishing lines cast out into the lake.

"I still don't see how you find this fun," Vivian said.

"Well, it's not so much...fun," Meara answered, "as it is...meditative? It's more like...part calming, part anticipation. You never know when something's going to bite, and in the meanwhile you just sit back and relax." She shrugged. "I...can't really explain it."

A moment later, Vivian's line tugged against the pole. Something big had taken the bait.

"Got one!" she shouted, immediately tugging back to try and pull the catch in.

Vivian had hooked something _very_ big. Whatever she'd caught...was much stronger than she anticipated. Indeed, it pulled _her_ forward, and off-balance. She lost her grip on the fishing pole and fell forward into the chest-deep lake water. The pole vanished into the water as the catch swam off with the line still hooked into its mouth.

"Sis!" Devin cried out. Meara stood up, alarmed.

Vivian resurfaced a couple of seconds later, completely soaked, and glared up at the other two.

"Sis, you're supposed to catch the fish, not let it catch _you_ ," Devin said, extending a hand to her.

She took his hand, pulled hard, and sent him tumbling forward into the water too.

"Hey! I was trying to help!" he shouted, after surfacing and spitting out a mouthful of water.

Meara sighed, putting a palm to her forehead and shaking her head.

 _I doubt they'll be doing this again anytime soon._

* * *

Sitting by the Moongate just outside the cave that held Ciar Dungeon, Meara looked over the herbs she'd picked from the nearby field of tall grass.

 _Base herbs... I think I have enough..._

She took out a potionmaking kit she'd bought, and set out the components—mixing vials and a small porcelain mortar and pestle to crush the herbs with. Next, she put one of the base herbs in the mortar, then slowly used the pestle to crush it and extract the herb's sap.

After a couple of minutes, she peered into the mortar; a clear slightly-green goop had been squeezed out of the herb. It smelled pleasant, but she wasn't sure what exactly it reminded her of.

 _OK, so that's the stabilizing agent…? Now I have to do this with the bloody herb..._

Meara poured the liquid into a vial, set it aside, then cleaned out the mortar with a bit of water. She took a bloody herb she'd picked from a recent trip into a dungeon with her friends, then did the same thing with that herb.

After a couple of minutes of mashing with the pestle, the red-colored herb produced a viscous red sap that smelled like rusty iron. She poured it into another vial.

 _Ugh. That explains that taste. Okay, so...now I need to mix these together into the base potion?_

Meara took a bottle filled with a slightly blue clear liquid, in the familiar shape of the potion bottles, and set it in front of her. She then poured in the extracts from the plants, then stirred the mixture with a small glass rod. It turned a shade of dark red, just like the recovery potions sold by the healers around Erinn.

She picked up the bottle, carefully looked it over, then held it under her nose and sniffed a bit.

 _Seems about right… I think it worked!_

* * *

Meara and Kiandra stood upon Dunbarton's city walls behind the church, leaning on the parapet, watching the sun set behind the mountains just west of the city.

"So, you want to try being an entrepreneur too, huh?" Kiandra asked. "Good choice. You'll never get rich working for someone else, after all."

"Well, the idea occurred to me," Meara said.

"Okay. So...what are you good at making?"

"Umm...I think I have a knack for potions. It's pretty easy for me."

"Huh." Kiandra put a black-gloved hand to her chin. "Potions? I...haven't seen more than one or two other people selling them. I'd say there's definitely a market for it. Lot of kick-in-the-door dungeon-diver types out there who'd appreciate better stuff than what the healers sell, and they come back with plenty of loot. So, I say go for it."

"I _can_ make them stronger than what the healers sell. ...I find...intellectual work like that relaxing somehow. It feels...familiar. Like my magic."

"Good. It's important to have passion for your work. That way, you don't give up on it." Kiandra patted Meara's shoulder. "I think you'll do all right."

* * *

"Did you forget what time it is?"

Meara looked up from her book to see Devin looking down at her as she sat on the steps of the Dunbarton town office.

"Oh, uh...I guess I lost track of time."

"Interesting book?"

"Sort of. I was reading up on herbology." Meara looked up at the sky and the angle of the shadows. "Oh! The concert!"

She put the book away and stood up from the steps, yawning and stretching.

"You remind me of a cat when you do that," Devin joked. "And with your eyes and pointy ears it fits all the more."

"Don't expect me to purr for you, though. Hope we're not too late."

"Sis and Kiandra are already there holding seats for us."

"Well, let's not keep them waiting then, shall we?"

They walked through the mass of vendors sitting in the square, when Devin noticed three men dragging the corpse of a dead bear up a ramp into the back of a horse-drawn cart, leaving a bloody trail.

"What the hell happened?" he asked.

"Oh...that happened this morning," Meara answered. "That bear just ran into town and attacked someone in the street. A bunch of Milletians killed it. ...This has been happening way too often..."

"What's gotten into the animals lately? They're not starving or anything… It's like something's driving them berserk. Even dogs and cats are getting irritable."

Meara averted her gaze as they walked between the bloody scene and the bank. "I don't know…and I don't like it."

They said nothing as they passed through the gate and walked to the Moongate just outside the city walls. Devin stood upon the gate, closed his eyes, and vanished.

Meara took her turn standing on the Moongate, visualized a Moongate on an island just southeast of Emain Macha, and with a wrenching feeling of dislocation, she was suddenly there.

"I'll never get used to that," she muttered. They started across the bridge connecting the island with the mainland.

"So...getting into potions?" Devin asked.

"Yeah. It's...one of those things that just seems...familiar. So I think I'm going to run with it and see where it takes me. Maybe it'll help me figure out who I used to be..."

Past the bridge, they started walking along a curved dirt road that led into town.

"You still don't remember anything?"

"No...still nothing. It's been months. I'm starting to think I'll never remember..."

"It's really bothering you, isn't it?"

Meara sighed. "I know I shouldn't, but...I just can't stop wondering."

"Maybe you're better off not knowing."

She gave him an annoyed look. "...why?"

"Well, when you think about it, being good at setting things on fire with your mind doesn't really strike me as one of the defining characteristics of a good person."

"...so you're saying I'm not a good person?"

"I think you're fine just the way you are now." He smiled. "At least you only set things on fire when it's for a good cause."

Meara giggled a bit in spite of herself, then sighed again after regaining her composure. "I...I don't think that knowing what I was would change what I am now... If it turns out I was something horrible, I can at least learn from my mistakes...right?"

"I guess so."

The dirt road ended just before the city's brick roads began at the edge of town. They passed through a gateway, then over a bridge.

"After all, isn't it our experiences that define who we are?" he asked. "If you lived a different life, you'd be a different person."

"...That might be the case," she said. "Though I've only been here a few months. Who knows what the future holds?"

They arrived at the theater. The seats were mostly filled. They climbed the steps and looked over the crowd.

"Over there." Devin pointed at a pair of familiar figures, one in green and teal, the other in black. Vivian waved with one hand, patting the bench with the other.

"Took you kids long enough," Kiandra said. "They're just about to start."

As Devin and Meara sat down, the curtain covering the doorway leading backstage slid to one side. A young woman with long wavy black hair dressed in white stepped out onto the stage, with a microphone in one hand.

"Thank you for coming today, everyone," she said, her voice amplified by the microphone. The crowd cheered.

* * *

The pack of man-hunting bears plaguing travelers on Dugald Aisle had come back.

Meara glared at the group of bears up the road from her. She could have left this to someone else, but this was a personal matter.

 _They got me before, but today, **I** am the hunter..._

Hiding upwind behind a rock, she took out her Fire Wand and began a lengthy incantation for a new spell she had just learned a few days ago. This was the first time she was putting it to use.

 _This spell takes me half a minute to cast. Just don't notice me here for a little longer…_

A huge mass of flames grew around the Fire Wand. Finally, after pouring most of her Mana into the spell, a huge sphere of flames hovered around the wand. It was ready.

 _Now let's see how this works…_

Peeking up over the rock, Meara launched the Fireball at the giant bear in the middle of the pack. Her body tensed up with anticipation as the flaming sphere flew in a slow arc to its target, roaring and hissing as it went.

She braced herself for the fireworks.

When the sphere of flame hit the ground, a massive explosion erupted below the alpha bear, with a brief blindingly-bright flash of yellow-hot light and a deafening boom. In an instant, the blast engulfed the bears, knocking them off their feet as they roared in pain and anger. The shockwave from the explosion almost knocked Meara over too, even though she was sheltered behind a large boulder, and she reflexively turned away.

When she looked back, she saw the aftermath of her spell. The ground was scorched black; mundane fires still lingered after the magical blast dissipated. In among the flames lay several still-burning bear carcasses, their hides partially burnt away revealing charred muscles and sinews. The alpha bear who'd been at ground zero had been blown completely to bits; its limbs and smoldering viscera had been scattered ten paces in every direction.

Meara stepped out from behind the cover of the boulder she'd been hiding behind, standing triumphantly in the middle of the road. She looked over her handiwork, with vehement satisfaction on her face.

 _Revenge is mine!_

The painful experience of being nearly torn limb from limb from this same pack of man-hunting bears was still seared into her memory, months after the fact. At least nobody else would have to experience what she'd been through.

Her satisfaction was tinged with a bit of remorse, though. She had certainly _intended_ to kill the bears, but perhaps not with this degree of...overkill.

 _...at least they'll trouble no one else._

The fire was still spreading through the dry grass along the sides of the road.

 _Maybe...that went a little too far. I...didn't think this through enough...and I didn't think it would be **that** big..._

Meara looked up at the clear blue afternoon sky.

 _I hope it rains soon, or this might be a problem…_

Aside from starting a brush fire, there was another consequence. She could already feel a headache coming on.

* * *

"My old life?" Vivian replied, as she folded a paper crane and threw it into a pile between her and Meara. They'd amassed several dozen of the delicately folded origami birds in the past hour.

"Well… There's some things, some people, I regret leaving…" she continued, "...but it was way more bad than good."

Meara sighed. They never went into details. Her friends were also Milletians from another world, but they _did_ remember their past, and she got the impression that they didn't _want_ to remember it.

They'd come here to _escape_ it.

"At least you know why you're here," Meara said, tossing another crane into the pile. "I've got nothing but vague feelings and a gift for burning things that I'm not sure I'm comfortable with. But you? You have an identity, a history, a family, and a lifetime of experiences to look back on. Would you really want to lose all of that to get rid of a few bad memories?"

Vivian sighed, folding another paper into a bird. "Well, if it's all-or-nothing...no, I guess not."

A minute passed in silence.

"At the rate we're going, it's gonna take us days to make a thousand of these," Vivan grumbled.

Meara sat her handicraft kit down on the ground. "This doesn't seem like such a good idea anymore... Besides, it's not like I can just _wish_ for my memories back. Nothing's _ever_ that simple…"

* * *

Meara took a few dozen vials of bottled liquids out of her inventory; some red, some yellow, some blue, and a few that were peach-colored. She put the newly-mixed potions into a kiosk standing at the base of Dunbarton's city walls.

"I don't see how this works."

"They work...well," Kiandra said, placing a few of her newly-tailored outfits into an adjacent kiosk. "Honestly, I don't know how these things keep people from just grabbing them and walking off without paying; they just _do_. It's magic or something. Gives me a headache thinking about how things like this work..."

 _So it's not just me_ , Meara thought. She'd often wondered if she was the only one who thought things like mysterious unseen inventory spaces, spontaneous teleportation, and endlessly regrowing trees were bizarre and unnatural.

Meara organized the potions into an orderly arrangement in the kiosk. "So many things in this world just don't seem right to me either. I'm glad I'm not the only one..."

"You're not crazy. It's weird. But I think I'm getting used to it. Okay, now you just set the price tags and you're done."

"What do you think they're worth?" Meara asked.

"The healers charge a hundred-fourty for red and yellow ones, right?" Kiandra asked back. "These are, what, three times stronger?"

"Something like that… It's hard to measure."

"Hmm… Try four hundred then? Pricing isn't an exact science. You've got to know what the competition is charging, and adjust accordingly. Though with these blue and pink ones...I think you're gonna be the trendsetter. If they go fast, charge more. If not, try less."

"Okay..." Meara set the prices on her potion vials. "That's it?"

"That's it. You're in business, kiddo. Let's see how it goes."

* * *

Late one evening, with a crescent Ladeca low in the west, Meara emerged from the Moongate just south of Tir Chonaill, intent on heading for the inn for the night.

She'd barely gone three steps when she heard screams coming from the pasture behind her. Turning around to see what was happening, she saw two young girls who'd apparently been shearing wool from the sheep...and a huge pack of black wolves that had just emerged from the southern forest, jumping over the fence.

 _Again?_

The children seemed frozen in fear, as the wolves pounced upon and took down a couple of sheep who'd been near the fence. Several more wolves emerged from the deep woods, and three of them were twice as large as the others.

Meara took up her Lightning Wand, charging a Lightning Bolt spell.

"Don't just stand there! Run!" she shouted at the children. They looked back at the unexpected voice. As if all it took to dispel their fear was to look away from the wolves, they ran towards the Moongate.

Three of the wolves broke from the pack and started chasing the girls. Taking aim at the closest wolf, Meara let loose with the spell. With a roar and a flash, the magic chained through all three of them. Giving pained yelps, the wolves fell dead mid-stride.

The children took cover behind the Moongate, peeking out from behind.

Meara wasted no time preparing another Lightning Bolt. With the wand's modifications, one charge was as good as five. Advancing towards the pack of wolves, she unleashed the magic at a wolf in the middle of the pack.

The Lightning magic arced through five wolves in one blast, each of them falling dead with a final whimper. With most of their pack dead, the remaining wolves seemed to hesitate, not sure how to react to this threat.

 _It'll probably take more than a Lightning Bolt to deal with th_ _e_ _big_ _on_ _es_ , Meara thought. The wolves growled, hunching their backs in a defensive posture, glaring at Meara, perceiving that this red-haired girl posed a serious danger.

Lightning Wand in hand, Meara started casting a spell she had just recently learned; the wolves' hesitation bought her just enough time to charge it.

 _Here goes nothing..._

She unleashed the magic.

Lightning surged from the wand; a persistent current of electricity crackled from the wand to the wolves, stunning them in place. A few seconds later, five massively powerful lightning bolts struck each wolf from a clear sky, striking them dead in a cacophony of thunderclaps and bright flashes.

It was over.

Meara sighed in relief, a bit light-headed from the mental exertion. Fireball and Thunder took most of her Mana; she could only use them at full potency once without having to recuperate. And using them gave her a headache.

She turned back to the children. They emerged from hiding and ran up to Meara.

"You saved us!"

"Wow, that was cool!"

"Are you all right?" Meara asked. "What happened here?"

"We're all right… We were just shearing sheep when those wolves came out of nowhere and jumped the fence..."

"Thanks, lady! I wanna study magic now too!"

Meara smiled at them. "I'm glad you're all right. Be careful, now. These days, it doesn't seem like we're safe anywhere..."

"We will. Thanks again."

"Bye!"

They turned and ran off, in the general direction of Deian's shack.

 _The animal attacks are getting worse by the day_ , Meara thought. _This can't go on._

She turned toward the bridges across the stream, to head for the inn.

The sides of her head were already throbbing. It was going to be a miserable night.

* * *

Meara sat in the Dunbarton school library, reading a history book that had caught her attention. It was dark outside, partly from the late hour, partly from the heavy rainstorm outside.

The sound of rain falling on the roof was punctuated by the door swinging open. Meara looked up from her book to see a rain-soaked Devin walk in.

"Thought you'd still be here," he said.

"I'm waiting for the rain to let up," she answered.

"You might be here all night then."

He walked to the table Meara was seated at, sitting down across from her, but avoided making eye contact.

"Interesting book?"

"Sort of."

Neither spoke for a while, until Devin broke the silence.

"I've...been asked to do something. It's probably going to be...dangerous. And I can only take two other people with me. So, naturally, I'd like you and Vivian to come along..."

Meara looked up from her book at him. "...what exactly is it that you're doing?"

"It's...something important… Important for everyone. ...For one thing, it'll hopefully put a stop to the bears and wolves coming right into town and attacking people."

Milletians had stopped the savage beasts from killing anyone so far, but the attacks were only growing worse. The land was crying out for a hero to restore peace...yet nobody was answering the call.

"If it's something so critical, you sure you want me to help? All I'm any good at...is setting things on fire with my mind. You said it yourself."

"Well, that's exactly what I need, and I don't know anyone that's better at it. I was told to bring people that I trust...so of course that's you and sis."

"Of course I'll help, but...what is it that we're going to be doing?"

Devin turned his gaze downward. "Well, I...don't know if I can talk about it freely..."

"I'd still like to know what I'm getting myself into...even just a little hint."

Devin sighed and stood up, while taking a book from his belongings.

"...I'll just leave this here then."

He set it on the table.

"Good night, Meara...and thanks."

He turned and left, closing the door behind him. Meara picked up the book Devin had left on the table, and read the title embossed on its spine.

' _The Embodiment of Destruction, Glas Ghaibhleann?'_

An ominously timed roar of distant thunder swept over the town. The rain was worsening into a thunderstorm.

 _...this...sounds bad._

She hesitantly opened the book to the first page.


	13. Second Triad

**Crimson Anima, Chapter 12: Second Triad**

* * *

Meara awoke in her usual room in the Tir Chonaill inn—with one of the usual headaches she'd start getting had a few days after a rebirth. She sat up on the edge of the bed, and the room around her seemed to spin.

 _Ugh, not again…_

Meara rummaged through her items carefully, trying not to lose her balance and fall over onto the floor. She took a small bottle of peach-colored liquid and downed it in one gulp, letting herself fall backward back onto the bed.

Staring up at the ceiling, she waited impatiently for the wound remedy potion to take effect. They were meant to quickly heal serious wounds, but Meara had found through some testing that they did wonders for dulling pain as well. The disorientation soon stopped, and after a few minutes the pounding sensation on the sides of her head faded.

Meara sighed, carefully standing up again.

 _Would have made me five hundred gold if I'd sold it, but it's worth it to stop the pain on mornings like this..._

Feeling more at ease, she left the room and carefully made her way down the staircase, still not trusting her balance.

The proprietor Piaras greeted her at the bottom. "Good morning."

"Morning." She hesitated a moment. "Um...I think I'm going to be away for a while. I don't know how long, though..."

"Oh? Well, I'll save the room until you get back. You're my most reliable guest."

"Most days, I'm your only guest."

"Well, be careful out there then. Seems like it's not safe anywhere these days."

Meara left the inn, crossing the wooden bridges across the stream to head to the Moongate. Out in the meadow beyond it, a pack of white wolves lay dead in the grass. Meara had struck them down with a few spells the previous evening—and had paid for her good deed with a worse-than-usual headache today. Nothing stirred in the meadow now; the sheep had been killed by the near-daily attacks by wolves, and the sheepdogs themselves had run off to join their wild brethren.

She stepped upon the Moongate, envisioned a similar gate near Dunbarton, and braced for the disorientation she always felt when being teleported around. Reality shifted around her, and she found herself at a counterpart gate just outside the walled city.

As she headed into town, she spotted two soldiers in the brown uniforms of the Aliech Kingdom standing guard outside the gate, longswords at the ready. They paid Meara no mind as she passed; they were on guard against threats of a four-legged nature. Uladh's towns were now virtually under siege from the berserk wildlife. Soldiers like these had been dispatched from Tara to guard the entrances to each town; every day they had to fend off dozens of beasts crazed for blood and flesh.

Walking through town, Meara saw the usual sights of Milletians trying to sell their unwanted wares in the plaza, and the native townsfolk going about their business. It almost seemed like normal—if not for the bloodstains of slain beasts in the street.

 _This has to stop_ , Meara thought. _But what can we do?_

* * *

Meara was supposed to meet her friends outside the school soon; today they would be heading off to do...whatever it was that Devin had been requested to do. First, though, she had checked in with Stewart to see if he had any new assignments for her.

He didn't.

"Is there really nothing more?" she asked.

"Of course not! There's always more to be learned, but you've reached the limits of what I can impart myself..." Stewart adjusted his glasses. "I'm very impressed with how far you've come these past few months." Nodding in satisfaction, he continued. "You've been one of my finest students. You have a keen mind and, I might say, an insatiable thirst for knowledge, judging from how much I see you over in the library. I have no doubts you will become a peerless sorceress. The best students always surpass their teachers, after all."

"...Really?"

"Don't limit yourself to what others have accomplished before you. Never take it for granted when others say it can't be done. I hope that, someday, aspiring magicians will be learning from you."

"Well, thank you... I'll do my best to make you proud of me, then."

He chuckled. "You already have. Perhaps the Druids could teach you more, but they're generally too busy with their official duties to the kingdom. I may not have anything left to teach you right now, but I too am always looking for new knowledge—anything I find, I'll gladly pass on to you. And if you ever need any advice in the future, my door is always open. Good day, Meara."

* * *

And so, she left the school. Not for the last time, certainly. She'd only read a quarter of the books in the library, after all. But there was still a feeling of...finality, as she walked outside. No more lessons. Only experience would be her teacher now.

 _So, what Stewart told me basically amounts to...if I want even stronger magic spells, I'm either going to have to devise them myself, or consult the kingdom's order of Druids? I have no idea how I'll do any of that..._

Meara looked up at the sky. A waning gibbous Ladeca hung low in the west in the bright morning sky. Seven times now she'd seen the white moon wax and wane, a period of time the Milletians called a 'month', but the native Tuatha de Danann paid little heed to the passage of time, living their unchanging lives in their largely unchanging world, and saw every day as no different than the next. They were also very quick to forget the little details of their daily lives, it seemed. Only big changes made a lasting impact.

In that time, she'd gained many new skills, and learned a great deal about the world she seemed to be stranded in, but practically nothing about herself.

A familiar voice called out from her left. "Meara! There you are!"

"Oh; hi, Vivian," Meara said. "Something wrong? Where's Devin?"

"He's getting something from Kristell. I think I'd better let him explain everything when he gets here; I barely get it myself."

"...what exactly is it that we're going to do today, anyway?"

"We...have to save Morrighan, and he wants you to come along."

 _Save the goddess? ...From that monster described in the book he gave me?_

"...That sounds an awfully serious task for only three people," Meara said. "Well, I agreed to help, but I'm starting to regret this."

"Only three people can go," Devin's voice came from behind her. "Morrighan was very specific."

She turned to face him. "What?"

"I know, it sounds crazy. I wouldn't have believed it myself..." He took something from his pack. "...if I hadn't woken up with this in my hand, and I know I didn't have it when I went to sleep."

He held up an old blackened metal pendant.

"Morrighan gave you something in a dream?" Meara asked. "...Can I take a closer look at it?"

"Sure." He handed Meara the pendant, in the design of a cross in a circle. A few seconds after she'd taken hold of it, a chill went down her spine, and she felt like her stomach was twisting itself into a knot.

 _Ugh, what is this?_

She quickly handed it back, and the discomfort faded as soon as it left her hand.

"Anyway...in that dream, she told me...that she was imprisoned somewhere, and that it was urgent that we save her...that time was running out. Told you it sounded crazy."

 _...just what are the gods capable of, anyway? And what could possibly imprison one?_

"What could be keeping a goddess imprisoned, anyway?"

 _Besides another god..._

"I don't know," he said, "but I think we're going to find out."

"How do we get to her, then?"

"This." He held up a black dungeon pass. "We're heading to Barri Dungeon."

* * *

The three set off to Bangor on the road south; Devin wanted to discuss what he'd been told without anybody else in earshot. The road south across Gairech Hills had become overgrown from being poorly traveled, as few dared to traverse it anymore with all the enraged animals attacking anything that moved within their sights. Even the normally skittish and passive rats around Dunbarton snarled and hissed as they passed, showing none of their usual fear of humans.

"What's going on with the animals? It's like the whole world is out to kill us!" Vivian exclaimed."

"It's been getting worse for months, but now it's as if they've all been driven mad..." Meara said. "Even the dogs and cats ran away."

"It's got to be the Fomors;" Devin said. "If we save Morrighan, maybe she can do something about it."

Their destination was Tir na Nog, a perfect reflection of Erinn; supposedly the goddess Morrighan was being kept prisoner there. To reach it, they would have to pass through a gateway that was sealed up in the depths of Barri dungeon.

As the trio made their way across Gairech Hills, fighting as much as walking, Devin went over what he'd learned.

Many years ago, Mores, a hero of the great war against the Fomors, had been betrayed by jealous compatriots after humanity had emerged the victor, and now he aided the Fomors for the purpose of seeking revenge.

Mores was unknowingly helping Cichol, the god of the Fomors...but willingly helping the dark god to create an unstoppable monstrosity that would be unleashed upon Erinn to enact said revenge for his betrayal.

Three others had gone, years ago, attempting to do what they were doing now. They failed. Only one of them, Tarlach, made it back alive, but broken and ruined for his trouble.

They at last approached the northern gates of Bangor.

"Well, now you know as much as I do," Devin said.

 _I hope we fare better..._

There were soldiers at the entrance of the narrow canyon that led into town, but as the three friends weren't rampaging beasts, the soldiers let them pass, no questions asked. Though, they did give Meara an odd look…

"Something wrong?" she asked to one of them.

"Didn't know elves were still around. Eh, human enough. Move along," the solder grunted.

 _As expected. It doesn't even bother me anymore._

Nearly everyone she'd met over the last few months has done the same thing: gawked at her pointy ears and cat-like yellow eyes, but soon they decided an elf was close enough to being human and got over it.

Bangor was a run-down mining village that had seen better days, situated in a wide spot in a canyon. It was now just a few houses, a bar, a bank, and an armory run by a renown blacksmith and his apprentice granddaughter.

Arriving in the central part of the village, everything seemed normal, aside from a familiar figure dressed in black, their acquaintance Kiandra, speaking with the old blacksmith Edern.

"All right, I'm done." Kiandra displayed three newly-crafted helmets, handing them to Edern for approval. He looked them over.

"Yes, well done. Thank you. I'll see you tomorrow, then?"

"Sure." She turned away, a smile on her face, and seeing the others, she ran over.

"Isn't he a little old for you?" Vivian asked her.

Kiandra chuckled a bit. "Not as much as you'd think. Good thing I caught you kids here. Off to save the day, huh?"

"...you told how many people about this again?" Meara asked.

"Just you three." Devin said.

"Well," Kiandra continued, "I know you said three people, and I'd just be redundant with your sister along, but I can't let you kids run off and not do something for you. Here."

Kiandra produced four items from her possessions: a short sword, a bow, a quiver of arrows, and a kite shield. She gave Devin the sword. "I know you're not the swashbuckling type, but it's good to have a backup plan if you've gotta conserve arrows."

"Uh, thanks," he said, taking it and attaching the scabbard to his belt.

"And same for you." Kiandra gave Meara the bow and arrows. "I know you prefer magic, but you're still a good shot, so take this just in case."

"Right...thanks." Meara took the offering.

"And this is for you." Kiandra handed the kite shield to Vivian.

Vivian looked it over, nodding in approval. "What, 'Come back with it, or on it?'"

Kiandra laughed. "I'm not _that_ old. ...Just come back in one piece. All of you… I'll see you off."

The four walked into Barri Dungeon, once an old mine, now largely depleted of the valuable ores that had drawn people to the area in the first place. They stood before the statue of the Goddess Morrighan inside.

Devin looked up at it. "I wonder how much these statues actually look like her?"

"Guess we'll find out soon enough," Vivian answered.

"No turning back," he said. "You both ready?"

"As ready as I can be, I think," Meara said.

"We'll save her. Don't worry," Vivian reassured.

Kiandra waved from the entrance. "All right, you kids. Good luck..."

Devin took out a black dungeon pass from his possessions. "Let's go, then."

He offered it to the altar, and the world twisted around them. When things settled again, the trio found themselves deep underground. The smell of dirt and rust filled the air.

Meara also felt a permeating sense of dread she couldn't explain.

"We'd better be ready for some tough fights. I doubt they'll leave that gate unguarded," Vivian said. The siblings readied their weapons, and Meara prepared a full volley of Icebolts.

In the very first room, eight goblins rose up to oppose them when the first chest was opened. Sure enough, the Fomors weren't going to make this easy. Goblins were little match for them now, though, and they were quickly cut down, shot, and impaled on icicles.

* * *

Room after room, more of the same followed, six or eight goblins at a time, some armed with bows. The three kept a close eye out for them; their first encounter with enemy archers still fresh in memory.

A telltale large red key dropped by a slain goblin foretold the end was close, and soon after, they found the final doorway between them and the gate. Beyond the great door was a room full of mysterious glowing lights.

Three glowing spheres of ghostly light floated in the chamber. Meara had seen them before.

Will-o-wisps? They started shifting and darting about as the three friends entered, flying by some unseen means, then crackling with the electrical charge of lightning magic.

Meara took up her Fire Wand. "Lightning magic! Look out!"

They braced for a lashing from the wisps' magic; lighting crackled from the glowing spheres and struck them. Vivian blocked the spell aimed at her with her shield; Devin and Meara had to grit and bear it. The magic left more pain than actual physical harm, though.

Shaking off the pain, Meara fought back with her own spells, conjuring a full-strength Firebolt through the wand. Taking aim at the center of one of the glowing spheres, she unleashed it. It struck...something at its core, and the flickering ball of malefic light was extinguished, a dying ember falling to the ground and going out.

Vivian and Devin dealt with their own Wisps by themselves. Her blade sliced through one of the immaterial glowing spheres, and it went dark, falling to the ground. An arrow from Devin shot right through the third, but as it passed through, the ball of light flickered out.

"Could have been worse. You all right?" Vivian asked, looking over the other two.

"Yeah," Devin grumbled, "I'll be fine."

"If that's all they had to throw at us, I'll manage..." Meara added.

Gathering their resolve, they pressed on. Beyond the large chamber harboring the wisps, behind yet another statue of Morrighan, they found a massive ancient-looking gray stone door, bound in chains and locks.

Looking upon it sent Meara into a cold sweat.

 _I have a bad feeling about this..._

"This is the sealed door?" Vivian asked.

"Looks like it," Devin replied. "Morrighan said all I had to do to break the seal on it is to bring two other people I trust with me, and touch the door… Who better than my sister and my best friend?"

Devin cautiously approached the ancient gateway, reached out, and put his palm against the decrepit stonework. Almost at once, the chains upon the doorway crumbled into a pile of rusty scrap and fell to the ground. Devin leaped a step back in alarm.

The doors of the ancient stone gate slowly swung open with a dull grinding sound.

Beyond the gate...there was an empty blackness. A complete void. No light passed through the doorway—seemingly in either direction.

Vivian stared into the gateway. "Well, it's open...but where will it take us?"

Meara too stared into the void beyond. An indescribable terror took hold of her.

 _No… Not the void…!_


	14. The Unwelcoming Otherworld

**Crimson Anima, Chapter 13: The Unwelcoming Otherworld**

* * *

The three friends stood before the ancient stone door in the depths of Barri Dungeon, flanked by gargoyles. Beyond the gateway, they could see nothing but deepest black; not a glimmer of light shone through. It seemed as if no light could cross the threshold.

A sense of dread overwhelmed Meara as she stared into the void.

"Um...after you," she whimpered.

Devin looked at Vivian and Meara, seeming none too confident himself, either. He turned back to the doorway.

"...well, we're here. No choice but...to go forward..."

Steeling himself, he marched forward with all the bravado he could muster. As he passed though the doorway, he vanished.

For a moment there was silence. Then his voice emerged from beyond the gate.

"Whoa. This is weird," he called out. Though lost from sight, Vivian and Meara could hear his voice from beyond the dark portal, loud and clear, as though he were only a few feet away.

"It looks safe enough," he called out. "Come on in."

Seeming reassured, Vivian followed through, vanishing through the impossible darkness of the ancient door.

Meara's dread deepened further, now that she was alone on this side.

"Wow," Vivian's voice called out from the void before Meara.

She still hesitated.

"Meara? Come on," Devin called to her.

Meara stepped closer to the gate, just a few inches from the black divide between _something_ and _nothing_.

 _Just one more step, and..._

She froze up. Her feet wouldn't move.

 _...I can't do it._

She could still remember it, the one thing she knew before Erinn. The void.

The void that lay beyond death. The void that denies light, denies life, denies memory, denies existence. The void she was trapped in as a disembodied spirit for untold centuries, until Nao had saved her from that endless nightmare.

A nightmare that was now staring her in the face.

It stood before her. It _wait_ _ed_. It _hunger_ _ed_.

Meara took a step backward, her blood running cold.

 _I won't go back... I won't go back!_

Vivian's voice called out from the void beyond. "Meara, we don't have time for this."

A green-sleeved arm, shoulder, and Vivian's face re-emerged from the void. She reached out, grabbed Meara by the wrist, and dragged her through the doorway.

Meara screamed as she was plunged into the darkness.

Beyond it, Meara found herself in a place shrouded in deep, yet not total darkness. The platform that they stood upon was perhaps floating, perhaps falling, in an infinite void. Swirling patterns of luminous blue and red eldritch runes encircled the small platform, defying the unconquerable darkness with their faint glow. At the ends of the platform, two portals shimmered; one blue, from where they had emerged, and one red at the opposite end.

Vivian let go of Meara and took a couple of steps towards the middle of the platform. "All right. I guess...we go into that one?"

The wonders of the immediate surroundings were lost on Meara, though. All she saw around her was the endless blacker-than-black nothing around her. Fear overwhelmed everything else.

 _No. No. No. No no no nonononononono NO!_

Beyond this little pocket of something, an endless nothing.

She felt the emptiness closing in around her. It hungered! It would devour her and she would be lost again forever.

Meara let out a faint whimper, unable to move. Her companions turned to look back at what was the matter.

 _No. No! No! I can't be here! I can't be here again!_

She fell to her hands and knees. It felt like...nothing. She couldn't feel the platform below her, as if it had no substance.

 _No…!_

"Get me out of here!" she shrieked, "Please...!"

Vivian's eyes went wide, realizing something was very wrong. "Meara? Meara!"

"Meara, what's wrong?" Devin rushed to her side, putting a hand on her shoulder.

Their voices barely reached Meara. She couldn't move. She couldn't see. She couldn't feel. All she could do was whimper uncontrollably and cry. Fear of the nothingness all around her shut out all else.

She fell over sideways, as all sensation faded away from her.

Despair and darkness claimed her.

* * *

Meara felt something. Warmth on her face; pressure on her back, and the back of her knees; the sensation of being pulled downward, but something holding her up.

 _Wait, where is this? Daylight? Am I...being carried?_

"Wh-where are we?" she sputtered. She opened her eyes to a blue sky above her.

"Back with us now?" Devin asked. He was holding Meara in his arms.

She nodded, still disoriented from having fainted.

"Luckily, you're lighter than you look. Think you can stand?" he asked.

Meara nodded again. "I think so… How...how long was I…?"

"About five minutes. I'm gonna put you down now. Ready?" Devin carefully lowered her, setting her down on her feet, keeping a hand on her shoulder to steady her. Her balance held, but only barely. She couldn't stop trembling.

"You scared the hell out of me!" Vivian exclaimed. "You had a panic attack or something, and fainted back in that...whatever that weird place was. Devin had to carry you out, and we ended up...here."

 _Where is this, anyway?_

Meara finally took a look around at her surroundings.

At first it looked a lot like Tir Chonaill, but there were immediate and obvious differences. For one, the buildings were decrepit and decaying. And they were standing in the middle of a small crater, in the place of where the village square should be.

"Sorry," Meara said meekly. "I...I'm...just terrified of places like that. Empty spaces."

She'd never told them of the circumstances of her advent into Erinn, and...where she'd been before that; just that she'd arrived without any memories.

"Oh," Vivian said. "Oh, I...really shouldn't have yanked you in then, huh?"

Vivian put her hands on Meara's shoulders. "I'm...I'm sorry…" She turned her gaze downward. "You never said anything about it? We...we didn't know… Why didn't you say something sooner?"

"...what's done is done." Meara sighed, backing away from Vivian. "More importantly, where are we?"

This place looked like Tir Chonaill, but...abandoned?

Grass had overgrown the dirt pathways. Bladed weeds sprung up everywhere. Some of the buildings were boarded up; all of their wood faded and rotting.

They climbed out of the crater and found themselves standing in front of what was the bank, in the normal world. It too was boarded up. The sign out front was too faded to read, the wood sun-bleached and warped. The mailbox was coated thickly in rust.

No signs of life.

"Some paradise this is," Devin scoffed. "What happened here? _This_ is supposed to be Tir na Nog?"

"Maybe I can explain," came an unfamiliar male voice from behind them.

They turned to where the voice came from. A young man had emerged from what would have been Duncan's house. He walked awkwardly, leaning on a cane, barely able to stay on his feet. They walked up to him, going around the crater.

Vivian rushed ahead. "Finally, somebody! What happened here?"

"You're quite brave to come to a place like this..." He stood his cane in front of him, leaning on it with both hands. "I'm Dougal, the last human here, just a loser left behind to guard this ghost town. I think...I'm the last human left alive in this world. It's been years since I've seen anyone else..."

"What is this place?" Devin asked him. "Is this...Tir na Nog?"

Meara looked Dougal over. _He_ _looks a lot like how I think Chief Duncan might have looked in his youth. They're even dressed similarly._

"What? The legendary paradise? This? Haha, no. If this was Tir Na Nog, the world where sickness and death don't exist, why would I be crippled like this? This is...just a world that's been vanquished by the Fomors. There's nothing much to see here, but don't take my word for it. Feel free to look around. Who knows? You might find this place familiar. I'd stay away from the graveyard, though. Everyone who was killed...didn't quite stay dead, but they're definitely not alive, either..."

"...The Fomors did this?" Vivian asked.

"It was...a long time ago. We were losing the war...we made our last stand here...but there were too many of them. The Fomors...killed everyone else. Only I was spared..." He thumped his right leg. "And they crushed my leg, so I couldn't run away. The bones never healed right."

"Why just you?" Meara asked? _Why would they spare anyone?_

"I've asked myself that every day," Dougal answered. "I don't know."

"So...this isn't Tir na Nog, but a parallel world the Fomors conquered." Meara sighed.

 _Did we get lied to? Are we being led into a trap? Or was this all a mistake?_

"It seems so," Dougal lamented. "If this really is a parallel world, it must have some sort of a connection to another world. However, I'm not sure which world is the 'real' one, and which is the 'mirror' world."

"We came here to save the Goddess Morrighan," Vivian asked. "Do you know where she might be held captive?"

"The Goddess, huh? Then search the dungeon in the cave up the road from here. The last three people who came here, some years ago, went there with the same goal in mind. They went in, and...I never saw them again... Hope you fare better than they did."

"Wish us luck, then," Devin said.

Dougal chuckled to himself, turned away, limped over to an old rocking chair by the door of the decaying chief's cottage, and sat down on it. It creaked under his weight. He set his cane aside, put his hands behind his head, and closed his eyes.

"You'll need more than luck."

Meara scowled. _It seems he doesn't think much of us._

With no better options, the three headed up the road past the decaying mirror version of the healer's house, Vivian leading the way. However, up where in the normal world Trefor would have stood guard, there was a pack of...feral dogs of some kind guarding the path.

"What are those?" Meara asked.

Vivian drew her sword. "Trouble."

The ragged pack of dogs turned to the three trespassers, growling and snarling. However, after only a moment, something unseen spooked them. They turned and looked about in confusion, then as one, they turned and ran up into the hills.

"...uh, what happened?" Devin asked, bewildered.

Vivian looked around, confused. "It seems like something scared them off, but what…?"

"I don't know, and I don't like it," Meara added.

Vivian started walking again. "We'll just have to be—uh...do you feel that shaking?"

The ground _was_ shaking. Without warning, a huge, horrifying, gray segmented worm-like creature erupted from the ground, just a few feet in front of Vivian.

Vivian screamed. Devin leaped back in shock; Meara panicked and grabbed her Fire Wand, reading a Firebolt.

The giant worm creature lunged at Vivian, gnashing at her with massive foot-long pointy teeth. As she screamed, the creature's hideous mouth clamped down on her left ankle, then started shaking her about like a rag doll.

"Vivian!" Devin screamed, taking aim with his bow at the vile creature. He had a Magnum Shot ready to fire, but hesitated, out of fear of hitting his sister by mistake.

Meara slung a fully powered Firebolt from her wand at the creature, deftly directing it around Vivian. She screamed more as the spell barely missed her. The creature groaned loudly as the Firebolt struck its thick leathery skin. It lost its grip on Vivian's ankle, resulting in her being flung several feet away.

"Now!" Meara shouted.

With a clear aim, Devin fired a powerful shot from his bow. The arrow shot between its huge teeth and pierced right through the roof of the worm's mouth, the arrowhead sticking back out of its skin.

The worm creature topped over to one side and fell limp, apparently dead. Foul-smelling black blood slowly oozed out of its wound.

"What the hell _was_ that!?" Vivian screamed, clutching her mangled ankle. Blood was seeping between her fingers.

Devin and Meara ran to her side.

"Sis! You all right?" he asked, going pale with fright. She was a shade too pale herself.

Vivian hissed through gritted teeth, "Do I _look_ all right? I'm lucky that monster didn't bite my foot off!" If not for her boot, it just might have done so.

"Let me take care of that," Meara said, weakly. She had to suppress the urge to vomit at the sight of blood. Meara tugged off her mangled boot, tightly bandaged her ankle, then used Healing to stop the bleeding.

"Thanks, Meara..." she said weakly.

Vivian tried to stand up, but cried out in pain as her left ankle gave out under her weight and she toppled forward.

Devin quickly caught her. "I've got you. You'd better sit down again..."

"Damnit," she hissed. "Meara stopped the bleeding, but it still feels weak...and I feel dizzy..."

"That's...I think you're going to have to rest for a while, sis," Devin said. He carefully helped her sit down again, then knelt on one knee by her side, holding her hand.

Meara turned her gaze up at the cloudless sky, not wanting to look at the puddle of blood on the ground.

 _If this world has more horrors like this waiting for us, do we stand a chance here?_


	15. False Paradise

**Crimson** **Anima, Ch** **apter** **1** **4** **: False Paradise**

* * *

Meara double-checked the bandage on Vivian's ankle covering the bite wound from the giant worm, trying her best not to throw up or pass out from the blood on the ground.

"Looks like it's holding," she said.

"Thanks, Meara," Vivian replied. She looked pale, and seemed to have trouble focusing.

"Can you walk, sis?" Devin asked, his face twisted with worry.

"I don't think so," she answered. "Don't think I have the strength."

Meara looked around at the abandoned village. "We'd better find someplace safe to rest, then… We might recover quickly, but something that severe is going to take hours..."

"Good idea," Devin agreed.

He dropped to one knee, put an arm around Vivian's back, the other under her knees, and carefully picked her up.

"Oof. You're heavier than Meara."

Vivian scowled, glaring daggers at her brother. He glared right back. "What? I'm not implying you're fat! You're taller; there's simply more of you than her."

She sighed in resignation.

"More importantly, is anywhere around here even safe at all?" Meara asked. "That giant worm thing could burrow underground...if there's more of them around, they might be able to get at us anywhere. And who knows what _else_ is out there?"

"Maybe near the windmill, where the stream splits? At least that way it limits the directions anything can approach us from...except below, but we can't do anything about that," Devin suggested.

Meara paused to consider. "It'll have to do," she agreed.

"Would you get my sword first?" Vivian asked. She pointed off into the tall grass on the side of the dirt road. "When that thing shook me around, I lost my grip and it went flying off into the grass..."

Meara looked in the direction Vivian was pointing. Something metallic lay in the tall dead grass. "Okay...I think I see it..."

She walked over to the sword. When she reached out for it, her hand brushed a few of the blades of grass, and they cut into her skin a bit.

"Ow!" She pulled her hand away, looking at it, and saw a few small cuts.

The blades of grass, though dead, still had _extremely_ sharp edges.

"Meara? What happened?!" Devin called out.

"The grass...the blades are as sharp as knives! It cut me…!"

"You all right?"

"Yeah… Just a couple tiny cuts."

Meara cast a Healing spell, and with one of the five charges, healed the small wounds instantly. She tucked her hand into her sleeve and carefully reached for Vivian's broadsword again, avoiding the sharp grass as she took hold of the hilt and picked it out of the sharp foliage.

"I got it. I'll hold on to it for now." Meara walked back to her friends, and together they doubled back along the dirt road. The abandoned shadow of Tir Chonaill was overgrown with now-dead plants, but on closer examination, virtually all of the foliage was either covered in thorns or had sharp edges.

When they walked down past the inn, they found another major difference between this world and their own: Adelia Stream here was a deep, steep-sided, swift-moving raging river that had cut a much deeper channel along its path. The bridge in front of the inn had crumbled from rot and neglect, however, the bridge to Ferghus' smithy, as well the old windmill and half of the smithy itself had collapsed and washed away after the ground had eroded out from under them.

Meara looked dismayed at the damage. "...what happened here?"

Devin's expression turned grim as he looked down at the river. "It's...a lot bigger. Did the stream flood?"

"I guess we're going to have to go around..." Vivian said weakly.

Doubling back, they went past the church. Its windows had been broken and the roof had partially collapsed. Meara had to cut a path through the sharp grass with Vivian's sword as the road was completely overgrown.

The reservoir's fishing dock had collapsed, and the water was a rancid slimy green. Meara took a long look at it, then said "Hope none of you are thirsty, that water doesn't look safe to drink..."

There was a fairly large patch of open dirt and gravel in front of the remnant of the windmill that hadn't fallen into the river yet. Devin set Vivian down.

"How do you feel?" he asked.

"Cold," she answered, cradling her legs to her chest and wrapping her arms around them.

"Looks as good a place as any to set up camp," he said. "I'll get a fire going for you." Pulling a gathering axe from his inventory, he set to work chopping at a nearby tree.

Meara handed Vivian a red health recovery potion from her bag.

"Here. Drink this. It should help a bit."

"Thanks." Vivian took the bottle and drank a sip from it. "Ick. I never liked these. They taste like rust."

"I know. I think the bad taste is meant to keep you from overdosing on them..."

Meara looked up at the cloudless sky. Time seemed to pass at the same rate here. When they had gone into Barri, it was midday; now it was late in the evening. Soon it would be dark, and who knows what terrors the night holds in this place?

Devin returned with arms full of firewood, and got a fire started after a couple of minutes.

"There, should be a little light and warmth for tonight. Too bad I didn't think to bring much to eat," he said.

Meara looked towards the river. "Wonder if there's any fish around here?" she pondered.

"You wanna go _fishing?_ Here, of all places?" Vivian asked. "Would fish here even be edible? Seems like everything is either poisonous, rotten, or sharp..."

"What else do we have?" Meara asked. "I'm going to give it a try..." She dug out a fishing pole and bait from her belongings. "If we're here for more than a day or two, we're going to have to find some way to live off the land somehow."

Devin's expression soured. "Hmm… I don't think it's possible for us to starve or dehydrate, but...we're gonna get so hungry and thirsty it'll be hard to focus on much else."

"Yeah. Not looking forward to that," Meara said. "I'll see what I can reel up."

Meara walked to the stream, standing at the edge of the deep ravine the river had carved, and grimaced at the sight of the rushing waters. No wonder it sounded so loud. This world's Adelia Stream was a raging rapid. Anything in the water would probably be swept by too fast to hook.

Meara made an effort to catch something, but after an hour, she still had nothing to show for it; she kept losing the bait in the swift current.

The sun had set. From their camp, Devin shouted, "Meara! It's getting dark. Come back to the fire." Dismayed, she pulled up the fishing line and went back to the others.

"Catch anything?" Vivian asked. She'd finished the potion, and wasn't looking so pale. The empty bottle lay nearby.

"No," Meara sighed.

"Then we're in trouble," Devin sighed. "Here." He handed Meara what looked like a potato, skewered with a stick, that he'd roughly cooked over the fire. "Not much, but it's something."

Meara took it as she sat down, and took a bite from it. Kind of bland, but better than nothing.

"Thanks," she said, after swallowing the first bite.

The siblings both had a potato themselves. They slowly ate in silence as they sat around the fire, watching nervously for nearby movement in the deepening darkness.

Meara didn't hear anything but the flowing river, but couldn't shake the feeling that something bad was out there.

 _We're alone here in a parallel world, we brought very little food with us, we can't turn back, everything here is out for blood, and the sole inhabitant doesn't care what happens to us._

Twilight inevitably faded into deep darkness, with only an island of orange light around the campfire, and faint starlight above. Meara's mood darkened with the sky above.

"Why don't you girls get some sleep?" Devin suggested. "I'll keep watch for...whatever might be out there."

"You need to get some sleep, too," Vivian said.

"No, you just rest, sis," he replied. "You're hurt."

"Nobody should stay up all night. Get me up at midnight, and I'll take over until dawn," Meara suggested.

"Eh...fine," he sighed.

Meara looked up at the stars above, and an ill feeling settled over her. It wasn't what was _around_ them that was making her feel apprehensive, but what was _above_ them.

 _Don't think about it. Don't think about it. Just try and sleep..._

Stretching, Meara lied down with her back to the fire, curled up, and tried to get comfortable. The ground was cold and hard.

 _I miss the bed at the inn._

She closed her eyes, cleared her mind of thoughts, and slowly drifted off to sleep.

* * *

Meara was roused from a dreamless sleep by a hand on her shoulder gently shaking her.

"Meara? Wake up. Your turn."

She shivered a bit; it had gotten much colder.

"Mmm... I'm up." She sat up and stretched her arms.

Devin sat down next to her as she looked upward. The stars shone above them in a clear sky.

"Even the constellations are the same as back in Erinn," he said quietly. "It really is another world...that went wrong."

"That makes it all the more creepy," I whispered. Vivian was still asleep; they didn't want to wake her.

The unchanging bloody orb of Eweca was overhead; a last-quarter half-Ladeca hung low in the east, rising over the ridge southeast of town.

Meara rubbed her hands together for warmth, and shifted closer to the fire. The tips of her ears were numb from cold.

Meara looked over at Vivian, still asleep. She didn't look quite as pale.

"How's she doing?" she whispered.

"I think her pride's more hurt than anything," Devin faintly replied. "Vivian tries to act tough... When we were little, we got picked on a lot. I tried to protect her, but…" He sighed. "She wants to be strong, so I don't _have_ to protect her. So she can return the favor, for all the times I stuck up for her."

"I wonder if I had any siblings," Meara whispered. "I don't remember... I don't even remember my parents…"

"I'm sure they're out there somewhere," he said softly. "I'm sure they still love you."

"...no, I'm...pretty sure they're not…"

"Huh?"

"I…um..." She had to force the words out. "There's something I never told you… Before I was brought here… I was… How can I put this…?"

Devin glared at her, an eyebrow raised in puzzlement.

"I was...I was dead. I don't know how else to put it…"

"Dead?"

"I was...like a ghost, adrift in an endless black void…there was nothing, and nothing ever happened… Time was meaningless there…" Her voice wavered; her eyes started to fill with tears. "I was there all alone… It felt...it felt like an eternity… That's the only thing I remember from...before..."

Devin's face went aghast as a creeping realization came to him. "Oh, God…! I… I guess that explains what happened earlier… No wonder you hate being out at night."

"...it reminds me too much of...of that place…"

"I'd hate it too, if I was reminded of something like that every time I looked up…."

Devin moved over and sat at Meara's side, putting an arm around her shoulders. She flinched a bit at his embrace, but didn't push him away.

"...I don't know what to say. You've been through something that I can't even imagine… I know it sounds shallow, but...I'm sorry you had to go through that."

"I… I should have told you a lot sooner, but...it hurt to even think about it..."

"That's...unsettling, though," Devin said, worry creeping into his own voice. Meara could feel _him_ trembling a bit now. "Is that what happens...when we all die? We just...go to some empty place, forget everything about our life, and we're stuck there forever?!"

"I don't know… All I know is that's what happened to _me_. Maybe it's different for you. We're...from different worlds. Maybe something else happens for you..."

"Then I guess it's good we Milletians can't die, then, because I don't want to find out."

"I never want to go back there..."

"Well, you won't, if I have anything to say about it. Until you get your memory back again, you've still got us. And even after that, if you still want us around."

"Thanks, Devin…" Meara sighed. She said nothing for a couple of minutes.

"You should get some sleep now. I'll keep watch until daybreak."

"Yeah. Thanks. 'Night, Meara."

He let her go, slid away, and lay down a few feet away with his back to the campfire.

In only a few minutes, he was asleep.

Meara sat huddled close to the fire for warmth, now alone with her thoughts...and whatever else might be lurking. Every time she heard the slightest sound that stood out over the white noise of the river, she reflexively turned to try to see what had caused it.

 _I swear I can see shapes moving out there…_

Thoughts intruded upon her nervous vigil, in between the shadowy sightings.

 _Just **how** long was I...out there…? _

She looked up at the dark sky briefly; a feeling of dread knotted her stomach, and she cast her gaze back to the campfire.

 _I don't know… There's no way_ _ **to**_ _know… Hundreds of years? Thousands?_

She closed her eyes and sighed.

 _I_ _t was...certainly long enough that..._ _everyone I ever kn_ _ew_ _in my past life must be long dead_ _by now_ _._

She looked over at the sleeping siblings.

 _Did I have a brother or sister in my prior life? I must have had parents, at least, otherwise I'd have never come to exist… I suppose they'd loved me, when they were alive..._

A feeling of emptiness gnawed at her heart.

 _...but they're all long gone now. I'm sure of it. The only way I'll ever see my family again, in any way, is for me to regain my memory of them…_

Meara put more of the wood scraps on the fire, coaxing the feeble flames back to life.

 _I may not be alone...but as long as I can't even remember my family, I'll never feel...complete…_

Meara looked over at Vivian's mangled boot, sitting between her and its sleeping owner. She reached out for it, and looked it over. The worm's sharp teeth had nearly sliced the top half off above the ankle.

 _Maybe I can patch it up a bit..._

Meara rummaged through her things and took out a handicrafting kit, then set her mind to trying to mend the mangled boot. All she was really looking for was a diversion, anything to keep her mind occupied; to keep from looking up at the starry abyss above, or imagining things moving in the darkness…

It was going to be a long night.


	16. The Black Orb

**Crimson** **Anima, Ch** **apter** **1** **5** **:** **The Black Orb**

* * *

Meara stared intently into the dying campfire as it burned up the last of the firewood, sitting curled up a few feet away with her arms wrapped around her legs. It wasn't so much for the cold—though it certainly was chilly, and her ears felt numb—as it was trying to not look up.

It was a lot harder to ignore the source of her fears without something to keep her occupied; she'd finished repairing Vivian's boot as best as she possibly could hours ago, and the night had left her with no other distractions.

The empty void of the night sky was slowing brightening to the east, and the stars were fading away in the approaching dawn. The horrible night slowly drew to an end, and at long last, the orb of Palala crested the eastern mountains.

 _No time now to keep dwelling on the past… We have a Goddess to find, and not much time to do it before we starve here._

Meara stood up, stretched, and looked over at her two friends.

"Hey! It's sunrise! Get up!" Meara shouted.

The siblings stirred from their slumber, looking around at their immediate surroundings.

"Uh, it's morning?" Devin mumbled groggily.

Meara turned to Vivian. "Feeling better?"

"I still feel...a bit...woozy...but I think I'll manage... That potion helped a lot," she said.

 _Well, at least she doesn't look pale now…_

"You sure, sis?" Devin asked, rising to a sitting position.

"Yeah... This is too important for us to lounge around," she said, also sitting up.

Spotting her mended boot, Vivian picked it up and looked back at Meara. "You did this?"

"I did what I could with it," Meara answered, "but you'll probably want to buy a new pair when we get home..."

 _If we get home._

"Besides," Vivian continued, "if we stay here much longer, we're gonna run out of food, and nothing here seems fit to eat…" She pulled the boot back over her bandaged foot.

"Speaking of food, don't expect a five-star breakfast," Meara said, rummaging through her inventory to retrieve a half-stale loaf of bread. She stared at it and sighed, then roughly broke the loaf into thirds and handed the siblings one piece each.

"It's all I have. Enjoy," she lamented.

"Better than nothing, I guess," Devin said.

"Thanks," Vivian said, nodding.

They sat around the dying remnants of the fire as they ate, clinging to its warmth. The sun had risen, but the high mountain air got cold at night, and the mornings were slow to warm.

Devin stood up after finishing off his chunk of bread. "So...back to whatever passes for Alby here? Seems like that's the only lead we have to go on..." He turned to face the river. "...and I don't think we're gonna get past that."

"If the rest of the world is this run-down," Vivian said, "I don't think we're missing much."

Meara nodded in agreement, still eating.

* * *

After their unsatisfying meager meal, the three broke camp and started carving a path to the dungeon. As they rounded the fishing reservoir, the stench of dead fish nearly choked them.

"Ew, what _is_ that?" Vivian clamped her nose shut. "It didn't smell that bad yesterday, did it?"

There were dead fish floating in the pond, and the water was choked with algae coloring it a sickly shade of green. The fishing pier had rotten and collapsed into the pool, leaving only the supports sticking up out of the fetid water.

"Gross." Devin winced.

"You know..." Meara covered her own nose. "...I hope you realize this means we have no access to _water_ , either..."

A distressed look crossed the siblings' faces.

The river was similarly useless as a water source. Adelia Stream here wasn't the placid brook it was back home; here it was a narrow, deep, raging torrent. Its rapid flow had cut a steep gully several feet deep into the land, and the water was out of reach.

"So...no food, no water..." Vivian said. "...we'd better get this over with quick."

As Milletians, they wouldn't starve, but they _would_ get hungry...and dehydrated. They just couldn't die from it. And in a way, that made it _worse_.

* * *

In the bright morning daylight, the three got the chance to take a good long look at just how run down this warped copy of Tir Chonaill was. Everything that had been built from wood was fading and rotting. Everything that had been built from stone or brick was cracking and crumbling. Everything that had been made from iron had already crumbled to rust. Humans were gone; now everything built by humans was being erased. All the plants were sharp-edged, pointy, barbed, and covered in thorns. And the animals...well, the few they had seen were none too friendly, either.

"Geez. I'd say this place has been abandoned for at least fifty years," Devin observed.

"Makes you realize just how many things around us need people to keep them in one piece," Vivian added.

"The Fomors say they exist in balance with nature and want to kill us off to restore it. If _this_ is what they had in mind by the 'balance of nature,' then let nature burn," Meara grumbled.

Vivian burst out laughing. "Now that's the last thing I thought I'd ever hear an elf say."

"Well, I rather like the perks of civilization; this roughing-it business gets old fast," Meara said.

"What bothers me most is that _our_ Erinn could end up like this, if things keep going the way they've been lately, with all the animal attacks," Devin said.

"Then hope the Goddess knows how to stop it," Vivian replied.

* * *

As they passed the broken, crumbling stonework of the square, Devin shouted to Dougal, still sitting smugly in his old worn-down chair, "You could have warned us about that worm!"

He turned to the three. "Oh. I'd forgotten one of them was still around here. They can be quite a nuisance... If you can't handle a mere worm, maybe you should rethink your plans for saving your Goddess."

Dougal took something from his pocket, then threw it past the crater that was once the square. A green gem rolled along in the dirt a few feet before stopping near the trio.

"But if you insist on going in, start with that." Dougal turned away again.

"Not exactly a vote of confidence," Vivian said weakly. She was looking pale again. Her injuries may have been healed, but she'd still lost a lot of blood. That would take time to recover from...

Time they may not have.

Devin picked up the gem. "Thanks anyway." He turned away and kept walking up the road, Meara and Vivian following.

"Something's not right about that guy," Meara said once they were out of earshot. "How has he been living here all alone in that condition? How is that some...creature hasn't killed him by now, when he can't even walk without a cane?"

 _It makes no sense. There's more to him than he's letting on, but I can't tell what..._

"I know," Devin replied, "something doesn't add up with that guy...but right now, we don't know what we're dealing with."

The giant worm's carcass was still lying there from the previous day. Or rather...most of it. The local pack of dingoes had made a meal of a large chunk of it. The same pack of dingoes...that seemed to be lying dead on the road further ahead.

"Looks like something they ate didn't agree with 'em," Vivian said as the trio walked past the dead dingoes. The bodies were bloated and contorted.

"That worm didn't seem to agree with anything... Maybe its flesh is toxic?" Meara said.

"Guess we can forget hunting, too." Devin grimaced at the dead canines. "It's like everything here is trying to kill us somehow, even after it's dead. It would have been nice of Morrighan to have warned us about some of these things, you know?"

"Like 'don't trust the creepy cripple?', for one thing?" Vivian said.

"If she's been imprisoned in this dungeon here since the Battle of Mag Tuireadh, then maybe she doesn't even know how bad things have gotten outside?" Meara pondered. "...that was centuries ago, wasn't it?"

The three friends passed though a gated wooden barricade, rotting like everything else. After trudging through more knee-high, sharp-bladed grass, they reached a cave that, in their world, held Alby Dungeon.

Vivian's eyes went wide. "...this is different."

In the old world, the cave containing the dungeon entrance had been neatly carved and sculpted to resemble a temple. Here, though, it looked...much like a natural cave, aside from an altar adorned with a larger-than-life statue of Morrighan that marked a dungeon's entrance. The edges of the cave were lined with deep ravines. Meara couldn't see the bottom.

"So where do we start?" Vivian asked.

"Well, he did give us that gem…" Devin said, holding it in his hand and staring at it. "So...that just leaves one question. How much do we trust that guy?"

"This just feels...wrong." Vivian said. "On the one hand, he did seem glad to see other people...on the other, he doesn't really seem to care what _happens_ to other people..."

Meara's expression soured. _There are just too many unknowns._

"Either it's a trap, or it's not," Devin said. "I don't think we have any other options...we just go in and hope for the best."

"And be prepared for the worst?" Meara added.

The three stood in front of the statue. Devin stared at the green gem in his hand for a brief moment. "Pretty much... Well..." he said, nervously. "...we'll manage...right?"

He dropped the gem on the altar.

Reality distorted around them, and they suddenly found themselves in an underground labyrinth of green stone walls.

It seemed to be a dungeon like any other...except there was no other statue of Morrighan inside. It was a warning: _this place_ _wa_ _s_ _ **not**_ _under Morrighan's protection. If something_ _went_ _wrong in here..._ _you_ _weren_ _'t com_ _ing_ _back._

* * *

They had gone a few dozen rooms into the dungeon, and so far they had only encountered packs of ordinary Goblins.

Meara nervously clutched her Ice Wand; the siblings had their own weapons at the ready.

 _Something doesn't feel right. If this is all there is between us and the key to Morrighan's prison..._

Carefully, nervously, with probably more caution than needed, they made their way through the unfamiliar and unearthly dungeon, one room and one hallway at a time. Much the same as dungeons in Erinn worked, a large red key was dropped by a goblin deep into the dungeon's second level, and a matching door lay in the next room ahead.

The door with the comically oversized lock groaned open. In the dim light beyond, they saw a very large and incredibly muscular humanoid creature covered in green scaly skin, easily twice their size. It had a roughly canine head, bat-like wings, a lizard's tail, and clawed hands, one of which held a giant scimitar five feet long.

It saw them. The creature growled, unfurling its large wings, then lifted off the ground, slowing flying straight towards them.

"A gargoyle," Devin said. "and a _big_ one."

"That...is one very large sword," Meara noted nervously.

"Got any ideas for how to deal with it?" Vivian asked.

 _Hmm…_

Meara switched to her Lightning Wand.

"Keep it busy for fifteen seconds while I...work my magic," she said, focusing on casting a spell.

 _I don't use this spell much and it takes a lot of Mana, but it should work..._

"Hope you know what you're doing," Vivian said, as she walked into the room, cast a meager Icebolt spell of her own, and flung it right into the approaching gargoyle's chest. It drew a small amount of blood and the stunned creature dropped back to the ground, alighting on its raptor-like feet.

Devin nocked an arrow and took aim.

"Pah, human magic," the wounded gargoyle growled. It stood up, flapped its wings, then lifted off and charged again with its massive blade raised, coming right for Vivian.

 _A bit more…_ The Thunder spell she was preparing greedily bled away Meara's mana as she desperately tried to rush the incantation.

Devin fired his bow. The arrow found its way to the gargoyle's abdomen; the shaft sunk about halfway in, vile dark blood oozing from the wound.

The creature roared in pain and anger, pausing to land again, only to take wing again with even greater speed and fury.

Vivian raised her shield as the creature closed the remaining distance in seconds, its new wound only seeming to enrage it.

The massive blade came crashing down. The shield held together, but the sheer momentum of the blade's impact knocked Vivian off balance, and her wounded foot gave out from under her. She fell to the ground with a groan.

"Sis! Meara, do something!" Devin shouted.

 _It's done!_

Her spell had finished charging. With a flourish of the wand, she cast it at the massive gargoyle as it raised its wicked blade to strike down Vivian's prone form. A stream of crackling electricity shot out from her wand, electrical currents visibly rippling through the beast as it howled in rage.

A strong tingling sensation filled the air; Thunder at work. The gargoyle snarled and growled in pain as the arcing current overloaded its nervous system and kept it stunned.

"Meara, I hope you had more in mind than a little lightning!" Vivian shouted, trying to stand back up.

"That's not all," Meara replied. "Watch."

Five powerful lightning bolts coming from seemingly nowhere struck down the gargoyle in rapid succession; a sharp crack of thunder accompanying each bolt rattled the dungeon.

With one last groan, the creature fell dead.

"...oookay, that was a _lot_ of lightning." Vivian said weakly. She slowly rose to her feet.

"Remind me never to get on your bad side," Devin added.

Meara slumped forward, barely managing to stay standing. She felt like a swarm of bees was buzzing in her head.

"Sorry..." Meara said. "...my big spells take a lot of preparation time...that's why I needed you to cover me..."

Devin ran up and put a hand on Meara's shoulder to steady her. "Hey, you all right?"

"That takes a lot out of me...but I'm okay...I think." The mental _buzzing_ in her mind wasn't going away.

 _...this isn't right. Something's going on… I don't know how to put it… it's... **not right**..._

Devin then turned to Vivian as she hobbled over. "You all right too, sis?"

"Yeah..." She looked down at her bandaged ankle. "But it looks like my ankle's not quite as okay as I thought it was, though. It's one thing to walk, it's another to get slammed like that."

Devin then turned to the doorway across the large chamber, beyond the slain gargoyle. "Almost there. If it's not in that last room, this whole thing was a waste of time."

Slowly, they crossed the large final chamber. An open door stood waiting, with a small room beyond it containing the usual statue of the Goddess. It wouldn't have seemed out of place in any other dungeon, with one exception.

A perfectly spherical black orb made of dull iron, about the size of a human head, was sitting on a pedestal behind the statue.

Meara poked at the ominous sphere. "Is this what we're looking for?"

"I think so," Devin answered. He slowly lifted it from the bowl-shaped top of the pedestal. "Huh. Lighter than I thought..."

"So if we use that back up at the altar, this'll take us to Morrighan?" Vivian asked.

"We're one step away now," Devin said.

Meara stared at the black orb. "As long as we can get past whatever's guarding her..."


	17. Sufferance and Salvation

**Crimson** **Anima, Ch** **apter** **1** **6** **:** **Sufferance and** **Salvation**

* * *

Having found the ominous black orb, the three friends wasted no time getting back to the surface, then offering the dark sphere to the altar.

Presumably, it would get them to where the Goddess was confined.

They found themselves in yet another dungeon. This place was much darker, and radiated a palpable aura of malice. The very air seemed steeped in enmity.

Vivian looked around hesitantly as soon as they stepped foot into the first room. No statue of Morrighan was there to greet them. "Yeah, this place just screams, 'get out.'"

"Not an option," Devin said, his confidence wavering.

"You didn't think this was going to be easy now, did you?" Meara said.

She tightly clenched her wand. The Mana just felt...wrong. The _buzzing_ in her mind was getting worse.

 _Whatever felt off to me before, it's twice as bad in here..._

"Uh, Meara…" Vivian hesitated. "You all right?"

"I don't know...something is just...wrong... It's like there's something wrong with Mana itself. I feel like...like there's a...a swarm of bees buzzing around in my mind..."

"Bees? I know I felt a little weird using spells myself, but...I guess it would affect you a lot more."

"You sure you're up to this, Meara?" Devin asked.

"Yeah...I can keep going. I _have_ to. _We_ have to..."

Vivian patted Meara's shoulder. "Let us know if you need to rest, okay?"

Meara simply nodded.

 _I have to keep going. It won't be any easier later._

Devin took a step forward. "All right. Here we go."

* * *

This placed seemed to work the same way as any other dungeon. A couple rooms in, they came to a locked door and a chest lying nearby. The three had their weapons at the ready; Meara had a fully charged Firebolt spell prepared.

Vivian prepared to open the chest. "Stay close...no idea what's gonna pop out."

She lifted the lid with a creak.

Three armored figures appeared in the room with them. They were reanimated skeletons, held together by the dark magics that controlled their actions. Each wore a heavy helmet on its skull and chainmail over its ribcage, wielding a warhammer. Their joints were held together by leather straps and decaying ligaments.

Vivian sprung to attack, slashing through the elbow joint of the closest skeleton and leaving it disarmed in a literal sense; lower armbones, hand, and warhammer clattering to the floor.

"What the…? What do I even shoot?" Devin pulled out his shortsword as a skeleton that had appeared uncomfortably close rose its warhammer to prepare a heavy strike.

Meara let loose her Firebolt at the closest skeleton, blasting apart its upper body through the chainmail. It crumbled into a pile of bones.

The skeleton taking aim at Devin wildly swung its warhammer at him. He sidestepped the clumsy attack. The skeletal warrior was left off balance, and Devin swiftly slashed through its empty abdomen to sever the spine below the ribs. Its upper and lower halves toppled over separately, and neither half moved again.

Vivian fiercely swung her heavy broadsword, chopping through the neck of the skeleton she'd disarmed. The skull fell to the floor, and the rest of the skeleton fell limp a moment later.

Devin sighed in relief. "One room down… Skeletons, huh?" He looked at his bow and arrows. "Nothing on 'em to shoot that would make a difference." He waved the shortsword. "Good thing I had this..."

Vivian kicked the fallen skeleton's helmeted skull. "Guess we're _really_ gonna have to be ready for anything."

* * *

They had gone a few rooms further, dealing with a few bats, snakes, and ratmen along the way. Vivian stood ready to open the next chest as Devin readied an arrow and Meara prepared spell charges, fire and lightning whirling around her wand.

"Ready?" she asked.

"Do it."

Vivian lifted the chest's lid. Five gargoyles appeared, a group of three in the middle of the room, one in the far corner, and one behind Devin that he did not see.

Meara blasted the cluster of three gargoyles with the combined fire and lightning spells, immediately striking them down.

Devin fired his arrow into the one across the room, the projectile going into the squat creature's neck. It fell over dying. However, the one behind him raised its machete to strike.

"Devin! Behind you!" Vivian screamed, charging at the vaguely canine winged creature.

Meara spun to see what was going on and fumbled to cast a Lightning spell. It wasn't going to be fast enough.

Devin himself turned while drawing his sword, but not fast enough. The gargoyle swung its machete and the blade caught in his side, cutting a gash into his leather armor and drawing blood.

"No!" Vivian swung her broadsword into the back of the creature's neck, cutting halfway through. It fell over dead.

Devin fell to his knees, dropping his weapons and clutching the wound. Meara immediately dissipated the Lightning spell and prepared Healing.

The color drained from the faces of both siblings. "No, no, no… Devin!" Vivian wailed.

"It's...it's not that deep," he grimaced. "Armor stopped most of it. Still hurts." A small stream of blood trickled through his fingers as he clutched the wound.

"Hold still and don't move!" Meara shouted. She cast Healing on Devin several times. The bleeding stopped.

"How does it feel?" she asked.

"Still stings," he grimaced. "but I can bear it." He rose to his feet again. "...Thanks."

"I'm, I'm sorry, Devin, I..." Vivian was on the verge of tears. "I wasn't fast enough!"

"It's fine, sis. I don't think any of us are gonna get out of this unscathed..."

* * *

It had been quite a while, and they had come quite a bit further, but not without taking quite a few wounds along the way. None of them had escaped injury; sometimes enemies simply appeared too close for comfort, and they weren't able to support each other fast enough.

"Ready when you are," Devin affirmed, arrow nocked in his bow.

Meara nodded, spell charges swirling around her wand.

Vivian hesitantly opened the next chest.

A pair of werewolves appeared, clad in ragged brown clothing. They immediately rushed to the attack, one charging at Vivian, the other at Meara.

Vivian blocked the werewolf's attempt to slash at her with its sharp clawed hands with her shield, then stabbed it in the chest with her sword. It slumped over, bleeding out, and went limp.

However, while she was dealing with one of the werewolves, her friends weren't doing so well with the other. It simply shrugged off Devin's arrow and Meara's magic, both doing little visible harm.

Meara's Icebolts had done little more than make the werewolf slightly flinch. It was almost upon her! With no time to cast, she raised her wand in a feeble attempt to defend herself.

The werewolf batted her wand out of the way with one hand, and the other hand's claws lashed out at her head. She reflexively turned away, and felt the sharp claws rake down the side of her head, tearing through skin.

Meara screamed as the werewolf knocked her to the ground with a fist to the stomach. She toppled over as the wind was knocked out of her, losing awareness of her surroundings as she was left choking for breath on the floor.

She heard her friends shouting as they struggled with her attacker. Her vision spun, and with a pained gasp she managed to regain a normal breathing rhythm. She could feel blood running down the side of her head, down her neck...

The next few seconds were a blur; when her thoughts cleared, she found herself in Devin's arms as he cast his own Healing spell. The werewolf lay on the ground, Vivian standing over it with her sword through its neck, her eyes wide with fury, blood pooling on the ground beneath the slain monster.

Meara felt her wounds knit closed and the blood stop flowing, though her hair was a bloody matted mess. She took a few deep breaths. "T-thanks… I owe _you_ one now..."

"I'm not keeping score." He tried to smile, but his eyes were filled with worry.

* * *

They had come a long way, but had suffered terribly for it. Potions, healing magic, and first aid had carried them this far, but their recuperative supplies were running low, and now, just before the final chamber, they were nearly at the limits of their endurance, battered and bloodied.

"One more room," Meara gasped. She was mentally drained and struggling to focus on casting spells, with that perception of a vast swarm of insects buzzing around in her consciousness growing by the minute. Her body ached; she had taken her share of injuries too when her friends hadn't been able to cover for her, and their Healing spells weren't nearly as potent as her own.

Vivian was barely standing. "Just a little more…" She winced with every step from lingering pain, favoring her uninjured ankle. Meara had Healed it several times, but there were limits to what Healing could do.

"All right. One more," Devin groaned. He readied one of his few remaining arrows to fire. He had been using his shortsword more and more, afraid he'd run out of ammunition, and had taken a few hard hits and deep wounds for it.

"Wait, wait… One moment..." Meara said.

She quaffed a small mana recovery potion, the sour-tasting blue liquid slightly burning her parched throat. In spite of a pounding headache, and the incessant _buzzing_ in her mind, she then intertwined five Lightning and Icebolt spells around her wand.

"Okay... I think...I can handle... _one_ more room."

Vivian unlocked the door. It groaned and scraped along the stones as it swung open.

Within the vast chamber ahead stood six armored figures.

The figures were suits of armor...but they were _empty_ , as if worn by an invisible presence, with a ghastly red glowing orb of light in their exposed abdomen.

One of them...spoke, a hollow male voice echoing within an empty helmet.

"You will meet your end here, humans."

As one, they raised swords and shields, and slowly, menacingly, advanced on the trio.

"Well, I'm not a human, but don't count _me_ out," Meara retorted, blasting one of the animated armors with a combined torrent of cold and electricity. Its advance slowed, and the red light within it dimmed just a bit.

Devin fired a shot at one of the armors, to no effect. "The hell? They're empty!" He pulled more arrows out of his quiver.

Meara conjured another combined charge of ice and lightning magic, unleashing it at the armored phantasm, and the blood-red light within it went out.

The armor fell to the ground, inert, as if whatever force that animated it had suddenly vanished.

"Huh?" Meara blinked.

"Aim for the light in their stomach!" Devin shouted, after seeing Meara take her opponent down. He fired off five shots rapid-fire. Four missed the tiny target, but one landed, piercing through the red glowing orb in another armor. It went dark, and the armor collapsed into individual pieces.

Vivian took a defensive stance as a hollow knight closed in on her. It made a fierce overhead swing, which she blocked with her shield. She quickly countered by slicing through its seemingly empty midsection, aiming at the red orb. The baleful red light was extinguished, and the armor fell apart into its individual pieces at her feet, dropping its sword and shield.

The remaining armors, undeterred at the defeat of half their number, continued their advance.

With the odds evened, the three each squared off against one of the remaining spectral knights. Spells struck true, arrows landed their mark, a sword cut through the unseen, and the last three went down much the same as the first three did.

Seconds after the last animated suit of armor had collapsed into a pile of metal scrap, a low rumbling sound filled the air. The ground began to shake.

"What's happening?" Meara shouted, looking about.

"An earthquake?!" Vivian screamed.

"It's not going to collapse on us, is it?" Devin asked.

The shaking lasted only a few seconds, though it felt much longer. Distant sounds of cracking walls, falling rocks, and metal scraping on stone echoed through the halls.

Then...silence.

A brilliant white flash of light filled the room.

Once it faded...there was a woman standing before the three friends. She was wearing a white dress, had extremely long black hair...and bore pitch black wings upon her back. She held her hands to her chest, with her wrists bound together by a length of silver chain.

She was the very image of all the statues in the dungeons. Morrighan.

Her ethereal voice echoed in the chamber. "Thank you… Your courage and sheer will have brought me freedom after all these years. We may yet have time..."

Meara was taken aback. _This...is a goddess? I don't know what to think of this…_

She was certain of what she was _feeling_ , though: an intense presence; overpowering, yet not overbearing. Her friends were completely overawed, though. Devin went all out with a full genuflection, and Vivian bowed deeply.

Meara herself showed neither deference nor disrespect.

"We came to your aid as soon as we could," Devin said, practically grovelling. Meara had to resist the urge to roll her eyes.

A faint smile crossed the goddess' face. "I would like nothing more than to repay you for your efforts, but...we do not have time to do so… Too long have my pleas fallen on deaf ears and closed minds. The hour is late..."

Morrighan looked towards Meara. Though the goddess never opened her eyes, Meara felt the intense all-seeing stare upon her...the gaze of the infinite.

"The Avatar of Destruction, the legendary giant… Glas Ghaibhleann draws breath. Its resurrection is complete… Do you feel the corruption of Mana? It is a warning that the summoning has finished… Its very existence is an anathema to the natural order..."

 _Corruption of mana…? Is **that** what's going on…?_

"I've been feeling like _something's_ not right for a while now, but I couldn't describe _what_ it was..."

"Glas Ghaibhleann has no will of its own, nor a conscience..." Morrighan continued. "Only its body remains. It is totally under the will of its summoner...and it will destroy everything it encounters. Now, Cichol is trying to open a way for Glas Ghaibhleann to bring ruin to Erinn. I am doing all I can to prevent this...but I cannot stop him much longer. I have grown weak..."

"Then we're too late?! What more can _we_ do?" Vivian asked, nervously.

"Find Glas Ghaibhleann's will and conscience that was separated from its body. It has assumed a human form...it is nearby. Tell him that his body has been revived." She turned her gaze to Devin. "Give him the pendant that I gave to you."

"This one?" Devin held up the dark Celtic cross pendant. She nodded.

"He will help you find the physical body of the Glas Ghaibhleann… Then you must slay it, before Cichol can send it to Erinn to begin its onslaught… It may already be too late, but you must try...!"

"Dougal," Meara realized. " _He's_ Glas Ghaibhleann."

"I… I understand. We'll do what we can," Devin said.

"I don't know what chance we stand against it, but we'll do our best," Vivian added.

"I will maintain the seal between the worlds for as long as I can, but I cannot hold out against Cichol's attempts to break it for much longer... Until I regain my strength, there is little more I can do for you but this..."

Morrighan raised her hands, and the air between them began to glow.

Suddenly, Meara felt...rested, revitalized, all her fatigue and pain gone; like she could run for a hundred miles without stopping. Her friends looked similarly invigorated.

"Go with my blessing. I will send you to the incarnation of Glas Ghaibhleann's will now… Please hurry...or Erinn will face its final hours..."

With a mere wave of Morrighan's hand, Devin and Vivian both disappeared.

Morrighan turned to Meara, staring imperiously through her closed eyelids, her expression inscrutable.

A chill went down Meara's spine. "Um…?"

"Mearaithe Dearg. I understand that you have...questions...concerning your nature...your origins… Should you prevail over Glas Ghaibhleann, I will tell you all that I know...though it may not be as much as you would like. Now, hurry...!"

Without warning, Meara found herself outdoors, back in front of the abandoned old Chief's house, with Devin and Vivian at her side. They didn't seem to have noticed she hadn't been sent here along with them at first.

Only then did she notice what was happening _around_ them.

A mighty storm was approaching. The sky had turned as dark as night with a dense cloud cover. Occasional flashes of lighting flickered in the distance. A strong wind had picked up.

The door swung open, and Dougal hobbled out, clutching his cane for support. He seemed surprised to see them.

"Quite a sudden change in the weather, huh? What's happened?"

He paused for a moment. Thunder roared in the distance.

"...I see. You finally rescued your Goddess. I'd congratulate you, but unfortunately, we don't have a second to spare. My true body...is awake."


	18. The Dark God

**Crimson** **Anima, Ch** **apter** **1** **7** **:** **The Dark God**

* * *

The overcast sky seemed to be growing darker and angrier by the minute. As if to emphasize the severity of the situation, the lightning grew more frequent and the thunder got louder with every passing minute.

Meara stared at the young man who had called himself Dougal. "You're Glas Ghaibhleann, aren't you?"

He chuckled. "Figured it out, huh? That's right...in a sense. The people of your world once called me that… But I'm also a soul from another world, just like yourselves."

"Huh?"

"I came here with the intention of reclaiming my body that was summoned here against my will, but ended up stuck in the body of the last human left in this world. The Fomors let this one boy live, for a single purpose..."

Dougal paused as a particularly loud roar of thunder swept by.

"How...how long ago was this?"

Dougal put his free hand to his chin, as if in serious thought. "Not sure. Hard to keep track of time when things don't really change much. It's been decades, at least. Maybe even a century..."

Vivian's eyes went wide. "You've been here a hundred years?!"

Dougal lowered his hand, now leaning on his cane with both arms. "I have the memories of this boy from before I got stuck in his body. The Fomors left this poor wretch alive, broke his leg so it would never heal right; made him watch, as they killed everyone he knew in front of him to break his will. Then they used him as a trap for my spirit, so they could use my real body as a living weapon, knowing that I'd be harmless in this weak form. I can't even walk now, let alone take my body back."

The three stared in stunned silence.

Dougal looked up at the sky, then back at the three adventurers in from of him. "I don't want my body to be used to destroy an entire world. I just wanted to go back home. The Goddess probably sent you to me fully aware of all this..."

"She probably did," Devin said. "Uh, she said to give you this."

Devin handed the pendant he'd received from the Goddess to Dougal. Dougal took it with one hand, and carefully looked it over.

"Ah. Yes, I could modify this so it will take you to my true body. When you find my body...you'll have to destroy it..."

Dougal sat down on his old worn chair, then while holding the pendant in his left hand, he traced his right index finger around the edge of it. It started to glow faintly.

"Destroy it?!" Vivian asked. "But then what happens to you?"

More thunder swept past them, even louder now.

"Do you really have the luxury of being worried about me when your world is in such peril? It's the only option left to us. Destroy my body, and you'll not only save your world, you'll set me free."

Dougal stood back up, staring intensely at the three.

"Can you make me a promise? Can you promise you will defeat my body, and set my spirit free, so I can return to where I belong?"

"We'll do our best," Devin said.

"All right. I'll hold you to it. Here." Dougal handed the pendant back to Devin, now glowing with a sickly yellowish-green light.

A light rain began to fall, as the loudest roar of thunder yet roared past.

"Use that at the dungeon up there, then. You should know how it works. If you saved the Goddess, you might have a chance. Now hurry. You don't have much time left before my body is sent to your world..."

* * *

The three friends ran back to the dungeon. Meara felt light as a feather, brimming with energy, though that infernal sense of buzzing insects flitting about in her mind was stronger than ever, and it was becoming quite distracting.

 _I'm starting to think that when Morrighan said to 'go with her blessing,' she meant it in a very literal sense._

Once again they stood before the altar.

"This is it," Devin said. "Ready?"

"Yeah. Everything's resting on us," Vivian affirmed.

Meara sighed. "I never saw myself saving the world, but here I am. Let's go."

Devin pressed the glowing pendant to the altar, and the ever-unsettling feeling of being translocated into the depths swept over them. The three found themselves in a dark, foreboding place. The elaborately engraved walls were covered in dirt and mold. The stale air smelled of decay.

It might have been even more intimidating than the last dungeon, but oddly enough, Meara only felt...determination.

 _Morrighan's 'blessing' must be having more effect than I'd thought… Normally I'd be terrified in a place like this, but all I'm feeling is 'let's get this done...'_

"...how are you two feeling right now?" Meara asked.

"Like I could take on the world," Vivian enthused.

"Better than I have in a long time," Devin said. "What's your point?"

"Morrighan did something to us, with her 'blessing'," Meara explained. "Maybe she just felt we'd need it to be able to fight Glas Ghaibhleann, but a part of me can't help but question her motives…"

"Huh." Devin pondered. "Well, regardless of why, she's helping us, and it doesn't change the fact that we've got to stop Glas Ghaibhleann. I'll save my questions for when Erinn is safe."

* * *

The ominous dungeon seemed to go on forever, room after room, floor after floor, populated by virtually every manner of Fomor and beast the three companions had ever fought in the dungeons of Uladh. They fought on, regardless.

Meara had lost track of time. It felt like they had been pressing on for hours, yet she hadn't felt tired yet. Whatever divine power that Morrighan had bestowed on them, she knew she had pushed herself far beyond her normal limits.

Upon descending to the sixth floor down, Meara started to hear howls and screams from the depths, which couldn't possibly be coming from anything human.

"...do you hear that?"

"Hear what?" Vivian asked.

"It's...uh..." Meara cupped a hand to her ear. "I don't know _what_ it is, only that it's not good..."

 _Is this...Glas Ghaibhleann?_

A distant _thud_ sound came from ahead.

"I definitely heard _that_ ," Devin muttered.

"Something big is moving down here, and I think I hear it...screaming..."

At last, after more waves of enemies, they reached a huge, sinister-looking door. Just beyond it lay the source of the howls and screams with an unsettling _metallic_ quality to them, something practically radiating malice.

Devin stared at the door, with a bit less courage than he'd been mustering.

"I think we've found it..."

"...Are we ready for this?" Vivian asked.

"I don't know," Meara said. Her body was starting to protest being pushed so far beyond its limits. Morrighan's power might be stopping the pain, but she felt...weakness setting in. "...but it doesn't matter now, does it? Everything...everyone...is counting on us..."

"Then I guess this is it," Devin said, resigned to whatever might come.

The girls merely nodded in assent.

 _What more needs to be said?_

They opened the black iron door, ready to face their destiny…

Beyond the door, three figures waited, their backs turned to the door. One was a tall knight completely covered in black armor. One was a man in a red robe. The third was...Morrighan herself? They were observing…something else.

There was a colossal abomination in the back of the room. The humanoid creature was over twenty feet tall, clad in leather and metal armor, with four arms, and two ragged wings extending from its back. It was crouched before a massive pile of gold coins. It was _eating_ them, using all four hands to scoop up the gold and shove the shimmering metal into its ravenous mouth. Between bites and gulps, the monstrosity gave out snarls, shrieks, and growls—which sounded vaguely human, but with an uncanny metallic distortion.

The three figures turned to face them.

"Ah, we have guests. Uninvited guests…" spoke the knight, his voice distorted by his face-concealing helmet. "You've come very far, but you're much too late to prevent the resurrection of Glas Ghaibhleann."

Meara eyed the lookalike of the goddess before them.

 _This can't be Morrighan? It's not the same...presence..._

The false Goddess now spoke. "Behold, the Avatar of Destruction, given life once more… I commend you for coming here... As your reward, you shall watch your future's end..."

Devin pointed an arrow accusingly at the doppelganger of the 'Goddess' before us. "You're not Morrighan!" he shouted.

"So, you are aware...? Very well..." The false goddess chuckled. "Let us end this charade."

A cloud of black mist congealed around the impostor of Morrighan, disappearing after a few seconds to reveal...something else. Something almost Morrighan's opposite now stood there, a vaguely masculine figure completely cloaked in black, its entire body concealed, with pure white wings.

Its shrouded gaze fell upon Meara, and its unseen stare filled her with dread…

 _...Cichol._

"You have arrived just in time to bear witness to our triumph," the dark god announced. "The nexus between worlds is open… Once Glas Ghaibhleann has sated its hunger for gold, I shall send it to slake its thirst for destruction."

The knight in black armor spoke in turn. "The day we have long awaited...the demise of Erinn… The time has come!" He turned to the grotesque creature, then back to the interlopers. "Consider it an act of mercy that you'll be spared the nightmare of seeing your world perish in flames."

The dark knight vanished, if he had turned to mist and blown away.

Cichol laughed, sending a shiver down Meara's spine.

"Hahaha... Since you made it here, you have proven yourselves worthy of being the first victims of Glas Ghaibhleann... A fitting prelude to the end of humanity..." The black-robed figure began to disappear. "And yes, you elves will have your day too." With that, he was gone as well.

The left only the red-robed wizard, an old man, who had not yet spoken. He looked at the three, his eyes filled with...remorse. He said but two words.

"...I'm sorry."

Then, he too disappeared.

Across the chamber, Glas Ghaibhleann howled, an inhuman shrieking warcry that filled Meara with an instinctual primal terror, Morrighan's 'blessing' doing little to ward it off.

"I should have brought more arrows," Devin lamented.

"Looks like it's had enough to eat..." Meara stammered.

"Either that, or we're dessert," Vivian nervously added.

The four-armed titan stood up from the huge pile of gold coins it had been intently devouring, picking up two colossal swords that had been lying nearby on the ground, one in each of its two lower arms, then it turned to face the three who had come to challenge it.

Vivian looked nervously at the huge swords, then at her kite shield. "...I don't think this is gonna be enough to take a hit from _those..._ "

Meara stared at the approaching horror, and felt as if her insides were turning to ice.

 _...I'm not ready for this._


	19. The Final Stand

**Crimson** **Anima, Ch** **apter** **1** **8** **:** **The Final Stand**

* * *

The four-armed abomination, with its two massive swords, menacingly strode towards the three friends, bellowing a howling war-cry that sounded like the rumbling of a hundred iron plates being dragged across stone. With each step it took, the ground shook.

"How are we supposed to fight this thing?" Vivian whimpered. "We can't get close, those swords'll chop us to pieces!"

Meara gripped her Fire Wand tightly. "I guess...I'll try this..." _Might as well go all-out._

She started casting a Fireball spell.

"Try what?"

An arrow shot out from Devin's bow, striking the huge creature in the chest. It merely flinched, snarling at the source of irritation.

"At least it feels pain," Devin said grimly, lining up another shot.

"Pain is one thing, killing it is another," Vivian said. "Meara, what're you do—...oh! Fire in the hole! Brace for it!"

 _She knows what I'm doing._

"Let's see how well it burns!"

Meara let loose with the Fireball, flinging it across the room at the oncoming titan. The ball of magical flame landed at its feet. An explosion erupted at the point of impact, filling much of the room with incredible heat and light, while sending out a blast wave that shook the monster off balance. Glas Ghaibhleann screamed, a horrible cry like scraping metal. It thrashed and recoiled.

Devin grimaced. "...still not enough."

Once the blast dissipated, they saw the effect of the Fireball. The creature was badly burned, its skin blackened and reddened, oozing and glistening, but very much alive...and angry!

"I think I just made it madder," Meara whimpered.

Glas Ghaibhleann roared at them, a painfully loud iron-on-iron screech. It reached up with its upper pair of arms for the metal framework hanging from the chamber's ceiling, grasping one of the massive metal beams. With a bestial growl, it yanked on the beam. Rivets and bolts began snapping loose, chains broke one after another, and the entire framework began to collapse. Thick metal beams, chains, rocks, bolts, and rivets rained down in a chain reaction, as the entire structure gave way.

"Look out!" Devin shouted, shoving Vivian and Meara aside. A huge stone block and massive chains crashed down on the spot they'd just been standing in. Heavy iron beams fell all around them, clattering to the ground.

The raging beast roared again, swatting aside some of the fallen debris around it with its swords. It had ripped loose the beam that it had used to bring down the whole structure, gripping it in its two upper hands, holding it above its head.

"What's it..." Vivian's eyes went wide. "It's gonna throw it!"

Glas Ghaibhleann threw the beam that it had wrenched loose to start this cascade at the three small creatures that dared challenge it.

"Move!" Vivian shouted, yanking Devin and Meara out of the way. The ten-foot length of iron clattered as it tumbled right through where they had just been standing, smashing into another fallen beam.

"I hit it with my best shot and didn't even slow it down," Meara said dejectedly. "Now what?"

The monstrosity advanced on them again, picking its way through the metal and stone debris now cluttering the room, casting aside rocks and fallen beams.

"It's coming!" Devin yelled. They dragged themselves over a fallen beam, trying to get away, but the room was choked with metal and rock; they couldn't go far without having to climb over something. The creature was gaining on them.

"Watch it!" Devin shouted.

Glas Ghaibhleann raised a sword-bearing arm high up. The three barely dodged out of the way before it brought the sword crashing down, rending a gash in the stone floor, and sending little shards of rock flying in all directions.

"This thing won't give us a inch," Devin fumed. He took a poorly aimed shot and barely missed its arm.

"If only I could cast my big spells faster," Meara lamented.

 _There has to be a way, but it eludes me..._

The creature's power was terrifying. It was fairly slow, but relentless. Repeatedly, it chopped and sliced at its targets, growling with frustration as they barely managed to evade its next deathblow.

It pulled back its left lower arm, telegraphing its next move.

"Duck!" Vivian shouted. They dropped to the floor.

Glas Ghaibhleann swept its massive sword just above them in a fierce horizontal slash that could have easily cleaved them all in half.

 _Would Thunder do any good against this monstrosity? I won't have time for more than one charge, but it's something. Anything…!_

The three scattered as its other sword crashed down, gouging another gash in the stone floor. Meara started casting Thunder, but only bothered with one charge.

 _Are we going to have to whittle this thing down a piece at a time?_

 _There. Let's see what it'll do!_

She pointed the wand at the beast and a thin stream of voltage shot out to it; the opposing charges started to build up in the air. Glas Ghaibhleann growled at this annoyance, not stunned at all.

It raised its lower right arm, preparing to strike at this new nuisance. Devin pulled Meara out of the way, breaking her focus. The beast swung down its blade at where she had stood, rending another gash in the floor, sending shards of stone flying at them.

Stinging pain sliced across Meara's left arm and right leg, as sharp stone nicked flesh. She cried out reflexively, and clutched the wound on her arm.

Still, the spell had had time to work. A bolt of powerful lightning struck Glas Ghaibhleann upon its head. It snarled in pain and anger.

 _So magic can hurt it, but it gives no quarter, and no time to cast!_

Normal bolt spells weren't an option. Meara could cast those quickly, but they didn't have enough range. Trying to attack with them meant getting way too close to those deadly blades.

She looked back at the monster and a sudden realization chilled her—the burns she'd inflicted on it with the Fireball moments ago were largely healed already.

 _It's **regenerating** itself! We can't just keep poking at it...!_

"It's healing..."

"What?" Vivian snapped?

"It's healing itself! The burns from earlier! They're almost gone!"

The beast howled a war-cry at them, high-pitched and metallic, exhaling a noxious cloud of yellow vapor. An eerie glow emanated from its mouth.

A feeling of anxiety and dread crept over Meara...

"MOVE!" Meara shouted, backing away from the creature. The siblings reacted just in time, as it fired a blazing white-hot energy beam from its mouth. The floor glowed red with heat where it had struck.

"What the hell?" Vivian screeched. "Mouth lasers? That's cheating! Mouth lasers are cheating!"

"So that's how it burns things," Devin hissed.

 _That must have been some kind of magic. I sensed it in advance. But this is no time to think!_

"We can't just chip at it until it dies," Meara gasped. "It'll just regenerate forever. We've gotta make one big deathblow."

The monster stared at them and growled, as if plotting its next attack.

"But how?" Vivian asked.

"You read the book, I gave you, right? Wait...that's it!" Devin exclaimed.

The creature reared back its lower left arm. The three scattered to avoid another mighty blow that sundered the ground.

"What?" Meara asked.

"Incoming!" Devin shouted. The monster swung its right-hand sword in an overhead slash again, slicing through a fallen iron beam right on their footsteps.

"The book...it said they did something to the bones…!" Meara said. "That adamantium is supposed to block magic, but they do something to it to make it absorb magic instead?"

"And your point?" Vivian asked.

Meara felt a familiar prickling sensation…

"Mouth beam! Move!"

The three ran just in time for another mouth laser to blast through where they were standing. It struck the far wall, heating a ten-foot wide circular patch of it orange-hot. The super-heated surface started oozing like a viscous liquid.

"I don't think it can do that very often..." Meara said, staring nervously at the molten wall.

The creature pursued them, slicing through half-fallen beams with its massive swords, tossing and batting the fragments aside, as it cut a path through the wreckage it had brought down around them.

Devin drew the shortsword he'd fallen back on using when he'd run low on arrows. "I have an idea...I'm gonna stab that thing, then you use that Thunder spell on the sword."

"What?!" Vivian cried out, incredulously. "It'll slice you in half if you get close!"

"Are you crazy?" Meara asked.

"I just need you to distract it!" Devin shouted. He handed his bow and quiver over to Vivian. "Get its attention. It's always focused on whoever hurt it last."

"I can barely hit the broad side of a barn..." She clumsily nocked an arrow.

"Well, good thing you're aiming at something bigger than that."

The beast toppled over a pile of debris, clearing a path to them.

"Why are you doing this?"

Devin narrowed his eyes. "Desperate times call for desperate measures. What kind of brother am I, always letting you get beat up? Time for me to take one for the team too. Meara, start casting. Sis, get its attention, then you cover her so she can get the spell off...and guard her with your life."

"Devin, no!" she screamed. He rushed off to one side, trying to get around Glas Ghaibhleann.

Vivian nervously took aim with the bow, and haphazardly fired the arrow. Though she wasn't a very good shot, it still hit Glas Ghaibhleann in its torso, well off-center. That was still enough. It roared in anger, its full fury now turned on Vivian. She dropped the bow, and raised her shield again.

"Meara, do it..." she nervously ordered.

The beast started towards Vivian, now ignoring Devin. He got around to one side of it...then, in a furious charge, his blade raised, grasping the hilt with both hands, Devin ran up to the monster and drove the shortsword deeply into its calf, crossguard pushed to the skin, the blade no doubt penetrating down to the bone.

The beast howled in anger and pain, a cry like a hundred wounded screaming children thrown in among a thousand grinding iron plates. It dropped its two massive swords, thrashing about, then it backhanded Devin. He groaned in pain as the blow sent him sailing through the air, knocking him a good twenty feet away over a pile of fallen rocks and debris.

"Devin!" Vivian screamed his name, but her cry was drowned out by the wailing of the monster before us. Meara wanted to cry out too, but forced herself to concentrate.

 _I have to focus! I'll only get one chance...!_

As she poured her Mana into the Thunder spell, she fully realized what Devin had been plotting.

 _Metal bones... The sword is a conduit…to get past the skin..._

The beast turned to Vivian and Meara, howling and limping. It clenched four fists, staggering towards them. Vivian moved forward to stand between it and Meara.

"Come at me, you freak!" Vivian shouted a challenge, holding up her shield, bracing to be hit.

 _Come on! Faster!_

The monster was upon Vivian; it swung both its massive right fists at her, snapping her kite shield in half and knocking her aside fifteen feet into a pile of iron beams.

Meara's Thunder spell reached its full charge. There was nothing left between her and Glas Ghaibhleann now...

 _Pleaseworkpleaseworkpleaseworkpleasework...!_

Desperately, she targeted her spell at the shortsword that had been impaled into the creature's lower leg, willed the spell into action, and a surge of current connected wand and sword.

Glas Ghaibhleann opened its mouth, preparing to blast her with its mouth beam...then it roared as the iron blade conducted the small initial jolt into its body, followed a blood-curdling shriek as the five main bolts struck the sword in turn, delivering deadly shocks. The electrical charges from the Thunder spell rippled through its massive body, conducting through its very bones, electrocuting it from the inside out as it howled and screamed a hideous, ear-piercing death cry. Meara couldn't help but cringe.

With one last half-metallic groan, Glas Ghaibhleann collapsed, falling forward with a massive _thud,_ its head crashing to the ground about ten feet from her. It exhaled a foul, acrid cloud of yellow miasma, then fell silent. It did not move again.

 _We...we won?!_

Meara stared at the slain colossus for several seconds in stunned silence.

 _More importantly, are **they** okay...?_


	20. Aftermath

**Crimson** **Anima, Ch** **apter** **1** **9** **:** **Aftermath**

* * *

As soon as the miasma from Glas Ghaibhleann 's dying breath dispersed, Meara ran over to Vivian, sprawled out lying against a metal beam. She was trying to pick herself up.

"Vivian! Here, let me help you up..." Meara offered her a hand and helped her stand up, then cast a Healing spell on her. Vivian was able to stay standing, but seemed a bit wobbly on her feet.

"...ugh. Is it over?" She looked over at the colossal corpse.

"It seems dead... Let's find Devin."

A groan came from beyond a nearby pile of rubble.

"Back there!" Meara climbed over the broken pile of iron and stone rubble, finding him lying on his side, groaning and clutching the side of his chest.

"Devin!" Meara leaped down the other side of the pile of rubble, then knelt at his side, taking his free hand in hers. Vivian had gone around the rubble, and came up to him on his other side.

"...did we win?" he moaned, gasping and wheezing for breath.

"Yeah...we did it. Hold on!"

Meara stood up, and used Healing repeatedly with all the Mana she still had left.

"How do you feel now?"

"Like I got hit by a truck. Help me up, will you…?"

Meara and Vivian helped him to his feet.

 _...what's a truck?_

"Thanks," Devin mumbled. He managed to stay standing, but was still clutching his right side with his left hand.

"Are you all right?" Vivian asked.

"Ugh... Do I look all right? He slapped his side and winced. "Think I've got a few cracked ribs…"

Vivian looked back at the giant's corpse. "So, now what happens?"

A low-pitched sinister mocking laughter suddenly filled the room, and an ominous voice echoed around them.

"Most impressive."

A black cloud of mist appeared from out of nowhere, condensing and congealing into a solid form. The dark-clad white-winged god Cichol stood before them.

In his dreadful presence, Meara felt paralyzed, his unseen gaze chilling her to the bones.

"Ha ha ha... Interesting. You defeated Glas Ghaibhleann after all. This is much better than I expected..."

The red-robed wizard who had accompanied Cichol earlier then appeared between the three friends and the dark god, looking back at them while pointing a wand at the cloaked figure.

 _Wait a minute, weren't they working together? What's going on...?_

"Run! You don't stand a chance against him!" the wizard shouted.

"Mores. Are you having an attack of conscience, after all this time? You left the Glas Ghaibhleann flawed, weak and vulnerable… No matter. This will serve my purpose just as well."

The red-cloaked wizard turned to face Cichol.

"I've been looking forward to this moment since you killed my daughter. I merely awaited the opportunity. Your plan has now failed. Prepare yourself, Cichol! I will put an end to your scheming once and for all!"

"Ha ha ha ha! Failed? You fool. This is only the _beginning_ … As its creator, you should know what happens when Glas Ghaibhleann is slain..."

The colossal body of the fallen Glas Ghaibhleann...imploded in on itself. The floor beneath it and the surrounding rubble collapsed into a deep pit that opened beneath where the abomination once lay.

The pit seemed bottomless...

"Th... That's...!" Mores looked at the pit, then back to Cichol. "The destruction of Erg... The link between the two worlds… How... how could I… You used me...! Cichol! Is this what you intended all along?"

The dark god chuckled.

"The nexus bridging the worlds is now permanent. With this...your services are no longer required. I'll send you to join your daughter now…"

Cichol extended his pale white-gloved hands out in front of him. Between them, a maelstrom of dark energies coalesced between Cichol's hands., glowing at its core with a baleful red light, as he spoke an incantation.

"Darkha Selim Meder Dau Sabi..."

The malefic sphere flew at Mores, striking him in the chest, exploding around him. He screamed in pain and fell over, dead, smoke rising from his body.

"Only human. Your sorcery is but a pale imitation of the gods' powers..."

He stepped forward, over Mores' body, towards the other three, even as they nervously backed away.

"Now, what to do with you three?" the dark god pondered. "Do not fear. Blame fate for making you mere mortals."

Again he raised his hands, and the same dark magic that had killed Mores began to take shape again.

"Darkha Selim... Meder Dau... "

A brilliant flash of light filled the room, and a woman's voice sounded out.

"I order you in the name of the Goddess. Stop."

When the light faded, the goddess Morrighan was standing between the three and Cichol, staring him down through her closed eyes, as small black feathers drifted in the air around her.

"What's this?..." He looked back from Morrighan to the three behind her, then back to the goddess. "It seem I have underestimated you children. You've released Morrighan... No small feat."

Morrighan took a step forward towards Cichol. "Cichol Gricenchos, ruler of Fomors, heir of Balor… You have disrupted Erinn, spreading lies and sowing destruction while shrouded in my visage. As goddess of revenge, I will not stand for this..."

Cichol crossed his arms in front of him. "Ha ha ha ha! Are _these_ your champions now, Morrighan? Two battered children, and a tainted shade masquerading in flesh? How low you have fallen, to consort with such beings... Shameful."

"I will do what I must to preserve Erinn. I will not see another conflict drown this world in blood, even if half of it is shed by the Fomors."

Cichol pointed right at Meara.

"By drawing in beings such as that one? You would bring doom to us all. No. The first step to true paradise is the annihilation of humans and their ilk. Our world will be reborn from their extinction."

Morrighan unfurled her black wings, as if to shelter the ones behind her.

"You will do no such thing. Humans are under my protection. If you intend to bring them further harm, I will exact vengeance here and now. For them, and for myself..."

Cichol lowered his arms.

"With that weak body of yours, just freed from its prison...? Perhaps now is not the time. Cling to your broken paradise, then. We will settle this another day. As for you three, I will remember you..."

Cichol vanished, fading away like a cloud of mist being scattered to the winds. The oppressive and paralyzing atmosphere around the three friends dissipated.

Meara took a deep breath; a sigh of relief.

 _I couldn't do anything. I couldn't say anything. When the gods clash, mortals seem powerless to act..._

Morrighan turned to them.

"I came as soon as I could... but I see it was not soon enough. You succeeded in defeating Glas Ghaibhleann, regardless… Thank you... Are you okay?"

"We couldn't have done it without your blessing," Devin said, repeating his demeaning genuflection while wincing through the pain.

"I...didn't do much," Vivian said, eyes downcast. "If anything, thank Meara for finishing it."

"You all relied upon one other's strengths to reach this place and prevail. Stand tall with pride. I owe you all a great debt. The giant may be gone, but what I truly fear is what comes after this..."

Meara looked over at the seemingly bottomless pit where Glas Ghaibhleann had been struck down. "You mean that giant hole? Is that what's connecting the worlds somehow?"

"Yes..." Morrighan turned to face the pit herself. "The corrupted mana released from the slain Glas Ghaibhleann has made the gateway connecting Erinn and this world permanent… This was Cichol's contingency plan, if Glas Ghaibhleann failed to achieve the destruction he desired..."

Morrighan seemed to look down into the pit through her closed eyes.

"Now his Dark Lords will not need the dungeons to invade Erinn… It is inevitable they will soon exploit this. I will try to safeguard this place, and keep them away from here, but... That leaves everything else… I simply cannot protect all of Erinn alone..."

"So it was all well and good to Cichol if Glas Ghaibhleann destroyed Erinn, but this was his backup plan?" Vivian asked.

Morrighan nodded.

"Either way, it seems like we lost..." Devin lamented.

"All we did was buy some time," Meara added.

"It is...regrettable, but what is done is done..." Morrighan continued. "Cichol's ambition will one day bring ruin to the world. The Fomors will inevitably invade Erinn again, in their insatiable thirst for destruction..."

She turned to face the three again.

"Please prepare yourselves to face the Fomors, and Cichol's minions… See to it that no one else is deceived into serving them, as Mores was..."

Unexpectedly, Nao appeared in a flash of light near the body of Mores, whom Cichol had struck down. She knelt, and cradled the slain wizard's body in her arms.

"I'm sorry... Daddy... I'm sorry I couldn't save you…" Nao's normally immutable serene face turned sorrowful, and she wept, her father's body in her arms. "You did all this, because... Because of what happened to me...!"

"That is Nao Mariota Pryderi, the guide of the Soul Stream..." Morrighan said. "She has come for her father… Now you know why she called you to this world: be as a shield to defend the innocent; guardians of Erinn..."

"That man was her father?" Meara asked.

"It's okay now, daddy… Let's go home." With another flash of light, both Nao and Mores vanished.

A hint of a frown touched upon the goddess' face as she turned to the three companions.

"I will return you now to Erinn. May the blessings of Lymilark and Aton Cimeni always be with you. We will meet again when the time is right. For now, I bid you farewell..."

"All right. We'll do all we can," Devin said.

"Thanks again," Vivian added.

With a slight motion of Morrighan's hands, the siblings vanished in a flash of light, but Meara was left behind.

"Huh?" Meara asked.

The goddess then turned to her.

"You did not forget, did you?"

"...oh."

"I said to you that if you succeeded, we would discuss your past. Now, as I promised, let us speak… You have many questions, and I will hear them now."


	21. Revelations

**Crimson** **Anima, Ch** **apter** **20** **:** **Revelations**

* * *

Where a few minutes ago a battle for the fate of Erinn had been raging, now there was only dead silence in the wrecked chamber, aside from the occasional creaking of iron.

Meara was alone there—aside from the Goddess Morrighan, her expression one of inscrutable serenity, as black feathers floated around them in an imperceptible breeze.

 _Now that I have the ear of a goddess… I have so many questions, I'm...not sure what I should ask first..._

"You have my undivided attention, Mearaithe Dearg. What do you desire to know of yourself?" Morrighan asked. "I will answer as best as I can, but much about you remains shrouded in a dark mystery, even to me..."

"Well, umm... Uh, why do you call me that?"

"It is a name best suited for a lost and nameless soul, stained with crimson, that no longer knows itself. Mariota bestowed upon you a diminutive form of it, because it was...'cuter.'" She seemed to smile a bit.

"I remember Nao saying something like that. It's...the first thing I remember at all."

"Her lingering affections from her mortal life sometimes cloud her judgment…but it is acceptable. Because she recalls her life in Erinn, and still holds fondness for what she had to leave behind, it deepens her devotion to protect it..."

"Um...what do you mean by, 'stained with crimson?'"

Morrighan's expression turned blank and unreadable again.

"...Do you truly desire this knowledge, Mearaithe? It may pain you to hear it..."

Meara took a deep breath.

"This...isn't the first time I've been told this. That ignorance was preferable…" She clenched her fists, arms at her side. "But not knowing is a torment in itself... Tell me. I want to know!"

"Then I will say this first: I do not judge you for what you were in a life you do not remember...but what I perceive when I gaze into you fills me with consternation..."

Meara put her hands to her heart. "Gaze...into me…?

"...Your soul is stained red by an echo of evil. When I attempt to gaze into your past, an abyss of depravity stares back, a blackness born of sins beyond mortal means, and it lingers in you still, even though you have forgotten..."

 _What...?!_

"I was... _evil_?" A chill spread from Meara's gut, as if her intestines had turned to ice.

"Wicked beyond measure... I will not venture to guess the details..."

 _I...what? How? I... I..._

"Then what am I _now_...?"

"You are simply a Milletian. A soul from another world...but not any sort of Milletian I'd ever anticipated." Morrighan turned her gaze downward. "The form of a soul is constant, the undying will of a self-aware being—whence it was borne from matters not. Yours had been adrift for a very long time, in a place between realities where nothing should have been...an emptiness where either all things have ceased to be, or where nothing has ever yet existed..."

Meara took a step back, her eyes widening in surprise. "Ceased to be? Never existed? What does that mean?!"

Morrighan shook her head. "I do not know how you got to be there...or where you are from...and it is possible that the place you came from...no longer exists..."

"...Then how did Nao find me?"

"Purely by happenstance..." Morrighan looked up towards the ceiling. "The Soul Stream touches all worlds, in all realities where beings with souls dwell. Its branches flow through the nothingness between realities, and you happened to encounter one. Mariota called out to you, not knowing your origins, seeing only a stranded soul in distress she could not ignore."

The chill in the pit of Meara's stomach only deepened.

 _I guess Morrighan doesn't know any more than I do about where I came from, who and what I had been, or what exactly I had done._

 _But why am I here now?_

Meara had to struggle to give voice to her thoughts. "If I was... If I'd done something so terrible, so horrible… Why did I get a second chance to live?"

"Perhaps because you needed it the most… Your nature is one of darkness...but a soul's nature can change… You defeated Glas Ghaibhleann. You freed me. Regardless of outcome, your intentions are proof. All you need to do to walk in the light is to refrain from seeking shadows..."

"But why? How can you just overlook what I did?"

Morrighan looked right at Meara, with a slight smile, yet her eyes remained closed. "The loss of your memories has returned you to innocence. The chains of your past lie broken, but should you regain what you have lost, you will forge those chains anew. They will not be so easy to break a second time..."

Meara felt nauseous. "...so you're saying I shouldn't even bother trying to remember?"

"You were saved to be offered redemption, a chance to cleanse your crimson anima. It is upon you to part from your bloodstained past and accept a new beginning. I will not judge you for what you were; only what you may become. There is a glimmer of light in that deep darkness within you; allow it to shine forth."

Morrighan's expression hardened again. "But know this; I will protect Erinn from _all_ threats, regardless of their source..."

 _Creepy…_

Meara looked down at her hands. For a brief moment she imagined them covered in blood.

 _That's why I'm here? To be redeemed?_

She lowered her hands to her sides again.

 _That leaves the most important question I need answered..._

"I may be without sin now, but also without purpose... Is there _a_ _ny_ way at all to get my memory back?"

"There _are_ ways...but I will not speak of them. The danger to you, and to all things I am charged to protect, is too great… As to what your purpose should be...that is something you choose, not something that is given. Many paths lay open to you. Explore them and follow where your heart leads..."

The only thing Meara was feeling in her heart at that moment was...emptiness. "Is there anything else you think I need to know…?" she asked.

"I believe that what I have already shared with you has burdened you enough..."

 _Now she's being evasive. I think this is all I'm going to get… Wait...there's one more thing! It's the reason we came here!_

"I have one last question... The animals in Erinn were going berserk when we left to come save you. What's to be done about them?"

Morrighan's expression softened again. "The creatures were being driven to madness as a portent of the arrival of Glas Ghaibhleann. Now that it has been destroyed, they will calm again in the coming days…"

Meara fell silent. _At least I've learned **something** about myself, even if it's...unsettling to think about._

"Have you no more to inquire?" Morrighan asked.

"...I think I'll have to find the rest...on my own. You have my thanks for suffering my curiosity."

 _I...don't know how I feel about all this…_

Meara sighed. "I...think I'm ready to leave now..."

"Then I will return you to your companions' side. They will not be aware that I have...detained you."

"You can do that? Well, I...I guess you did it before."

"A final warning, Mearaithe. Do not seek power for its own sake. Do not pursue selfish ambition. That way lies evil. Tainted as you were by your former life, you may once again walk a bloody path… I do not wish to see you repeat past mistakes. Stand in the light, and you shall ever have my favor. Return to the darkness, and I will myself oppose you..." She paused briefly. "Either way, we shall meet again."

Morrighan raised her hands slightly from her chest.

"Until that time, farewell..."

Dizziness overcame Meara for a moment, then everything around her was suddenly...different.

 _Wha—? Where is this? It's...Tir Chonaill? The normal Tir Chonaill? Not the abandoned, overgrown Tir Chonaill?_

She found herself standing in the inaccurately-named "square." Devin and Vivian were standing there too, and also seemed just as surprised to be standing there. A few curious onlookers looked at them oddly, surprised that three people had just appeared out of nowhere.

"We're back!" Vivian exclaimed. "We did it!"

She hugged her brother, who winced a bit as the Healing hadn't quite mended the worst of his injuries.

"Yeah. We did it, sis... We're home."

"Uh...I'm here too." Meara feebly raised a hand.

Devin chuckled. "And we couldn't have done it without you, Meara! Come here!"

They both reached out and put an arm around her, pulling her into a group hug.

"I'm so glad you're both safe," Devin said.

Meara sighed, and put an arm around each of them too, closing her eyes. "Um...ah, thanks…"

The chill within her started to melt away in their friendly embrace.

A few onlookers whistled and cheered around them—not sure what they were cheering for, or why. They just knew that three people in the square were celebrating something, so why not share in their joy?

Weariness at last caught up to Meara; it seemed Morrighan's 'blessing' had fully worn off.

The three of them fell to their knees one by one, breaking up their little group hug.

Meara had never felt so...utterly spent, pushed so far beyond her limits.

"...I'm starving. And exhausted," Meara groaned. "I'm going to drag myself to Loch Lios, eat a half dozen cheesecakes, then sleep for a week."

Vivian laughed. "Sounds good. Mind if I join you?"

"I could go for a steak or five myself," Devin laughed. "...Just as soon as I check in with Dilys and get these cracked ribs taken care of... Ugh." He clutched his side.

"Don't ever do something that reckless again!" Vivian exclaimed. "I don't know what I'd do...if you ever…" She didn't finish her sentence.

"I don't want to lose either one of you, either..." Meara said.

Together, the three of them helped each other stand, clambered out of the square, then walked north along the road holding each other up. The crowds parted around them, let them pass, and life went on.

They limped up to the healer's house.

"Go ahead without me." Devin said. "...I'll catch up." He turned and went inside.

Meara and Vivian continued on north to the Moongate, one arm around the other for support.

"I feel exhausted," Vivian said wearily. "It's like it's all catching up to me at once."

"Same here."

More than tired, though, she felt...proud. More confident. They'd endured a great trial and come through it stronger.

"...but it's not over, is it?" Meara said.

Despite their great accomplishment, a proverbial dark cloud still hung over them.

Vivian sighed. "Just the calm before the storm, I'm afraid..."

As they walked, the brown foxes that frequented the path skittered away, rather than growl and nip at them as they had been doing lately.

 _It seems I have a lot of bad things to make up for…_ _I don't think saving the world once is gonna be enough._

Trefor gave them an odd look as the passed, but said nothing.

 _I still want my memories back, but the more I go looking for them, the more like it sounds that something terrible will happen if I find them..._

They reached the Moongate. Vivian stepped through first, disappearing into the gate. A few seconds later, Meara stepped onto it herself, closing her eyes, thinking of a Moongate on a island on the southwest side of Emain Macha. When she opened her eyes again, she was there, with Vivian waiting nearby.

 _For now, though, I'll be happy with a little downtime._

They put an arm around each others' waist again and kept walking.

An odd expression crossed Vivian's face "You know, I just realized I left my shield back there… Oh well, it got broken anyway..."

"I don't think Kiandra'll be too upset over it. We did come back in one piece, after all..."

"Yeah...I think she'll be satisfied knowing it got put to good use."

They crossed over the bridge to the mainland.

"Um, you know we're both a bloody mess, right?" Meara said.

Vivian's stomach rumbled.

"Food first. Repairs later."

Together, they continued on to the Loch Lios restaurant, for a well-deserved rest.


	22. The New Normal

**Crimson** **Anima, Ch** **apter** **2** **1** **:** **The New Normal**

* * *

When Meara appeared in the Soul Stream, she found herself on the usual white platform, with Nao waiting for her, but what _wasn't_ usual was the sky around her being filled with a scattering of gray clouds, and a strong wind blowing.

It had been like this on her previous two visits, but this time it was noticeably worse.

"Hello again, Meara," Nao greeted her, acting as if nothing was out of the ordinary. Her hair was blowing and her dress was rippling in the wind. "Here for a rebirth?"

"That, and…I was wondering...how are you feeling?"

"Me?" Nao asked.

"Yeah...what with your father, and all..."

Nao frowned. "I'm…not sure. I...didn't really know him, after all... When I was a baby, my family was attacked by...well, rivals of my father. My mother was killed, and he was taken captive..."

"When you were a baby?"

"Yes... They sent me away to safety just before it happened. Chief Duncan raised me. I learned the truth when...when I became the way I am now. It wasn't memories that I gained...it was more like reading what had happened from a book. I don't remember my parents at all…"

"Oh?"

"I feel more sad that I'll never get the chance to know him, than in knowing he's dead. He's at peace now, and together with my mother… I can be satisfied with that. I'm sorry...I've said too much." Nao's usual serene expression returned. "...Are you ready to be reborn?"

"Yeah… Don't change anything as usual. I'm fine with how I look."

"As you wish. I shall see you again soon, then...and thank you for your concern. I'll be all right."

Meara disappeared, her body being reconstituted in the world below. At once, the winds died down to a complete calm. Nao looked around at the surroundings as the dark clouds around her luminous white platform in the sky rapidly faded away, like a fog burning off.

"I don't know how much longer we're going to be able to contain it..."

* * *

It had been a month since Meara and her friends had returned from saving Morrighan in the Otherworld.

She walked across the fields outside Dunbarton under the late morning sun, heading towards Rabbie Dungeon. Fresh from a rebirth, she wasn't suffering any of her usual headaches or maladies for once. They'd be back all too soon, though.

A bear in the forest off in the distance clawed at a fallen tree trunk, looking for grubs. The wildlife around Erinn had in fact settled down. It wasn't entirely peaceful again, with the large carnivores still skittish and territorial, but the bears and wolves had stopped entering towns and attacking people on sight.

Meara walked through the gap in the wall around the old dungeon, then entered the dungeon lobby itself. Waiting for Meara was a dark-haired woman half a head taller than her, dressed in a form-fitting short leather dress, opera gloves, and thigh-length stockings, with high-heeled boots that added a couple more inches to her height—all of it black. In one hand she loosely held a mace.

Meara waved. "Sorry for the wait, Kiandra."

"What, you took the scenic route? It's fine, I just got here a few minutes ago anyway."

"I guess you're ready then?"

"Yeah, sure. I owe you some time for dragging you through Math so much last week. Just didn't want to fight those damn dogs."

Life seemed to be getting back to normal across Uladh...for most people.

Meara wasn't most people.

"I need to forage some herbs out of here...and this place gives me the creeps when I come down here alone," Meara said.

Standing together before the statue of Morrighan, Kiandra threw down a iron nail as an offering, and both were translocated somewhere into the labyrinthine depths.

"What, you afraid of skeletons or something?" Kiandra poked Meara in the side with her elbow as they rounded the goddess statue and descended into the dungeon proper.

"No, it's not that. It's...something I can't describe." Meara looked about nervously as they entered the first room, with yet another statue of Morrighan within. "It's like...I'm being watched...by something that doesn't want me here. But only when I'm alone..."

"I'd say you're being paranoid, but the things I've seen in my time here...who knows? Sometimes you just gotta trust your gut."

They came across the first closed chest that would summon monsters. "Okay. Ready?"

Meara prepared five combined charges of fire and ice with her Fire Wand. "Go for it."

When Kiandra opened the chest, the doors slammed shut, and four reanimated skeletons appeared with them in the room. Gripping her mace with both hands, Kiandra smashed open one's ribcage, knocking it to the ground, then crushed its skull. In the time Kiandra had broken one down, Meara had blown the other three skeletons to scattered piles of bones with her magic.

"I'd think you enjoyed that," Meara said, as the doors rumbled back open.

"Well, they've got no fleshy bits to stab. Always gotta use the best tool for the job, and it seems like a blunt weapon works best. Or maybe I'm just overthinking it..." Kiandra said, looking around at the bones scattered around the room. "Guess you can handle yourself...so you just wanted some company, hmm?" She smiled slyly.

"Like I said. Whatever it is that's...watching me...it doesn't watch when I'm not alone. I don't feel it."

Meara walked out of the room into a long hallway, and Kiandra followed.

"And I can't ask Devin and Vivian to come along anymore. Even since they signed up for Paladin training, I hardly ever see them, and when I do, they're usually too tired to want to do anything..."

"They know what they're doing."

"I hope so. I just hate to see them looking so run-down..."

They went through several more rooms, clearing out more reanimated skeletons along the way, when at last they came across a room with a floor full of broken tiles, with a patch of blue, red, and yellow herbs growing out of the dirt.

Kiandra went ahead into the next room, looking ahead for any potential danger.

"Nope. All clear," the tall black-haired woman affirmed. She leaned against the side of the doorway frame, keeping her mace at the ready while watching for anything that might be sneaking up.

"This'll keep me busy for a bit." Meara pulled a spade out of her inventory, dropped to her knees by a patch of herbs, and got to work digging them out by the roots.

 _Hmm... This one's firmly rooted._

Meara gave the stubborn mana herb a firm tug and pulled it loose. "Still need practice," she sighed.

Kiandra merely nodded, smoothing out a crease in her dress. "So how's business?"

"Made about a hundred and twenty thousand last week."

"Impressive. Sounds like you're doing pretty well for yourself."

Meara shifted to the sunlight herb patch, leaving the immature mana herbs to regrow. "I do all right, as long as I have herbs to work with. The green ones grow all over outside; it's the others I have to keep dungeon-diving for..."

"Cost of doing business. You've always got to be looking for more materials. I buy up whatever I can get, but getting your hands dirty is always the cheapest option..."

"Says someone who always wears gloves." Meara dug out the mature sunlight herbs, trying to keep the roots intact.

"Figure of speech."

Meara shifted to the bloody herbs. "I especially need these... Healing potions just fly off the kiosk these days."

"There's a lot more Milletians lately. I don't think you'll be hurting for customers."

"It _has_ gotten pretty crowded lately," Meara agreed. "The inn's always booked, and there's tent cities starting to pop up all over..."

Meara dug up the last of the mature herbs, then put the spade and herbs away in her inventory bags.

"Okay. Let's keep going."

* * *

After clearing out three iterations of the dungeon, the two women walked back to Dunbarton. When they arrived back at the square, Kiandra looked up at the evening sky, her red eyes squinting, judging the time.

"Probably after five... Um, have a seat," Kiandra suggested, pointing at the steps by the town office. "I'll be back in a few minutes." She then ran off towards the steps leading up to the church.

 _Inscrutable as always._

Meara sat down on the steps, and counted today's harvest: thirty-five bloody herbs, twenty sunlight herbs, fifteen golden herbs, thirty mana herbs, and twenty base herbs.

 _Not bad. I'll put them to use later. Gonna have to pick more base herbs, though._

Kiandra returned a few minutes later, with a pair of apples.

"Extras," she said, handing Meara one.

"Uh, thanks." She accepted it, and looked it over for a moment before taking a bite. "Church job?"

"Yep. Just made the deadline." Kiandra sat down next to Meara, legs crossed.

They sat and watched the crowds go by as they ate their apples in silence. A throng of Milletians were milling about among the shops, looking over the wares for sale.

After a while, a disheveled and haggard Vivian emerged from among the crowd, stumbled towards the two women on the steps with a feeble wave, then half-sat, half-collapsed on the step below them.

"Heya, you two," Vivian said weakly.

"You look terrible. What did you do today?" Kiandra asked.

"They call it 'training' but it's more like forced labor..." Vivian gave a forced chuckle. "If it's not hunting down goblins and kobolds in Barri," Vivian continued, "then it's mining for hours on end for gold. They never tell us what it's for, just that it's needed for...something."

"Gold? Specifically?" Kiandra tilted her head, her interest piqued. "That's odd… Doesn't get used for much." Lowering her voice to a whisper, she added, "I don't suppose they let you keep the iron, do they?"

"Nope. They make us turn in everything we dig up."

"Aww. I could always use more."

"Always after cheap materials, huh?" Meara said between bites.

"You have any idea how many ingots go into just _one_ set of armor?"

"No idea. Not my area of expertise," Meara said.

" _Dozens!_ " Kiandra exclaimed. "More if you're aiming for quality, and I take pride in my work."

"Pity. We probably dig up hundreds a day," Vivian said.

"What do you think they're doing with all the metal?" Kiandra asked.

Vivian sighed. "Don't know. I'm sure it's for a good cause, though."

"Hmm...we'll see. You eaten anything today? I'll buy you an orange."

Vivian shook her head. "Not since breakfast."

"Okay. Be right back." Kiandra got up and walked over to Glenis.

With Kiandra out of earshot, Meara asked, "I get that being a protector involves some self-sacrifice, but is this what Morrighan had in mind?"

"I think they're just trying to toughen us up," Vivian said wearily. Her words rang hollow.

 _Sounds like_ _she's only trying to convince herself._

Kiandra came back with an orange and handed it to Vivian. "There you go," she said, sitting down again next to Vivian.

"Thanks." Vivian fumbled with the orange, peeling it with some difficulty, then slowly ate it wedge by wedge.

The sun had set beyond the western mountains, filling Dunbarton with their shadows. Streetlights flickered on as the skies faded from blue to black. Eweca rose alone; a crimson orb low in the east.

A few minutes later, Vivian's brother Devin came stumbling along, looking even more worn-out than his sister. As the steps were crowded by three other people, he settled for slumping over the short handrail. As he did, he groaned in pain, looking down at the three girls. "Not interrupting any juicy gossip, am I?"

"No. Too tired," Vivian replied.

"Geez, you look like hell," Kiandra added.

Meara noticed his palms had been wrapped in gauze bandages.

"What happened?" Meara cried out, standing in alarm and clasping her hands around one of his.

"Blisters. And twelve hours swinging a pickaxe."

Anger flared up within her. She tightened her grip.

He cried out. "Ow! Don't squeeze."

"Oh! Oh, I'm so sorry... Here..." Meara let go, cast a Healing spell, and used it on him.

He laughed a bit. "Doesn't really help, but thanks anyway."

This abuse had set Meara's blood boiling, though she was trying hard not to show it. "You want to sit down?" she asked.

"Nah. I'm just going to go right to bed."

"I should go, too," Vivian added, standing up. "We have a day off soon. Let's do something together then?" Vivian asked.

Meara nodded. "Sure..."

The two siblings scuffled off towards the southeast gate. A tent city had sprung up in the fields around Dunbarton in the last month, and as far as Meara knew, they'd been camping out in a tent out there every night for quite some time. More and more Milletians were appearing, and there simply wasn't enough lodging to go around in the towns anymore.

 _It's painful to watch them growing more bedraggled and broken by the day._

Meara gave a dejected sigh, and turned to Kiandra. "Doesn't it bother you to see them so miserable?"

"Of course it does! But they can make up their own minds. If they don't want to quit, it's their choice." Kiandra stood up, glaring at Meara, arms crossed. "...And if you're their friend, you'll respect their decisions."

 _It's...hard to argue, and not just because she's three inches taller than me._

She let her arms fall back to her sides. "Anyway...I'm gonna be busy tomorrow. Want to go back to Rabbie the day after?"

"Sure," Meara said. "I need to use these herbs before they dry out too much, anyway, so I guess I'll use the day to do that."

"Okay. See ya, Meara."

Kiandra walked off, mixing into the crowd to look through the shops in the square. Meara remained sitting on the steps, lost in her thoughts.

 _Something about this doesn't sit right with me. Shouldn't Paladin candidates be training for battle, rather than being treated like slaves, toiling in a mine for twelve hours a day?_

Meara looked up at the sky, as the first stars began to emerge from deepening twilight.

 _Maybe I should go to Emain Macha, feign interest in enlisting, and try to get some answers? Or at least investigate why Paladin trainees are being put through this? I can't watch them suffering anymore…!_

Meara stood up, clenching her fists.

 _I'm going to get to the bottom of this...!_


	23. Obstructions

**Crimson** **Anima, Ch** **apter** **2** **2** **:** **Obstructions**

* * *

Craig glared past the document he had been reading at the red-haired elf that was wasting his valuable time.

"If you want to find out about what goes on in the training regimen, you'll have to enlist. If you want to enlist, you'll have to gain the Lord's approval. Good luck with that, being an elf. I'm not sure you'd make the cut, anyways. You look kind of...weak."

Meara glared at him. "Fine. I'll go do that." She stormed off.

She had come to Emain Macha and started asking questions about the Paladins, only to get nothing but stonewalling, excuses, suspicion, and evasiveness for her trouble.

 _I'm a terrible investigator._

Meara started the short walk to the Lord's castle.

 _It looks like I'm not going to get anywhere by trying to look in from the outside._

Standing outside the castle were three guards in full plate armor; two wore face-concealing helmets. The third, a man with short spiky silver hair, regarded Meara as she approached the castle's steps.

"Do you have business here, miss?"

"I'd, uh, like to inquire about...joining the Paladins? I was told I would have to seek an audience with the Lord of the city and get their approval? ...Would that be possible?"

The guard captain put a hand to his chin for a moment before speaking. "An audience? You're interesting in enlisting? Well, the Lord has no other audiences scheduled for this morning… I suppose you can go in, but you may be wasting your time, miss..."

"I still have to try."

The man shrugged. "All right then. Follow me."

He turned to walk into the castle, motioning for Meara to follow.

 _I'll just have to go right to the source._

She strode into the castle, following the guard captain, ascending a staircase to the second floor, then passing through a set of double doors. The silver-haired man stood just inside the doorway, off to one side.

"Lord Rian and Minister Esras will see you now." He motioned her to go through.

A red carpet ran the length of the throne room. Two identical thrones sat side-by-side at the far end. In one of them sat a teenage boy in a regal suit. At his side stood a woman in an ornate druidic gown, with lavender hair.

"Enter," the woman beckoned.

Meara cautiously entered the throne room, walked its length, and bowed deeply before the thrones trying to look properly humble.

 _Gotta use a silver tongue around these sorts…_

"Good day, your Lordship."

Esras glared down at Meara dismissively. "Well, what's this? An elf? You've certainly traveled a long ways, haven't you?"

The young man sitting on the throne moaned. "Uhh..."

"Allow me to speak in my Lord's stead," Esras said. "He has not been feeling well lately. What brings you to journey from your faraway lands and into our presence today?"

 _That boy is the lord? Not feeling well? He looks_ _ **half-dead!**_ _What's going on here?_

Gathering her thoughts, Meara made her pitch. "My name is Meara. It has come to my attention that I must gain the Lord's favor to join the ranks of the Paladins. Though this is not my home, I am...no longer welcomed in the lands of the elves. If I may be called to devote my life and fortune to your service, and to Emain Macha, then so be it."

The minister's expression soured. "The Paladins? Hmm… While we admire your willingness to devote yourself to the sanctity and security of our beloved city, we...will have to decline your... _unorthodox_ request." She crossed her arms in front of her. "We would just as soon not have an outsider involving themselves in our nation's affairs. With all due respect, please keep your pointed ears out of _human_ matters."

Meara lost her composure and frowned.

"If that is all...?" Esras added.

Meara stood up. "I understand. I suppose I'm wasting my time here, then. I apologize for disturbing you."

 _Hmph. Not the first time I've been snubbed for being an elf._

Meara heard just the faintest trace of...a voice? A mere whisper at the limits of her perception came from the young man on the throne.

"Help...me..."

 _Did he just say...? No, I must be hearing things. Speaking of which…_

Meara heard heavy metal-clad boots approaching from behind her.

 _Sounds like I'm about to be shown the door. Or maybe dragged through it._

Esras pointed at Meara. "Captain Aodhan, please escort this lady outside. Our business is concluded. Good day, Miss Meara. Fare well, and...mind your own affairs."

Aodhan walked up to Meara's side, and gestured to the door. "Sorry about that. I tried to warn you… This way, please."

* * *

After being escorted back outside, she walked down the street, past the bank, to the fountain plaza. She sat down on a bench with a deep sigh, and stopped to think.

 _Sounds like I've been put on notice... So, now what do I do...?_

A man's voice came from behind her. "Ailla...? Is that you?"

Meara turned to find a shaggy-haired bard with a large pointy wide-brimmed hat staring intently at her. He held a lute in his hands. Meara couldn't see his eyes through his hair bangs that hid half his face.

"Um, sorry, but I think you have me mistaken for someone else…" she said.

"Oh, sorry. My mistake, miss. From a distance, you looked a lot like someone I knew..."

"Well, the pointy ears should have tipped you off that I wasn't from around here." Meara tapped her right ear. "Seems they're the first thing anyone notices, anyways..."

"That's precisely why I made the connection. She was also an elf. You had the same hair too, just yours is a little brighter red, now that I look at it. It's an interesting story—if you have time, and you're willing to listen?"

 _There's other elves around here? Okay, now you have my attention..._

"...sure, why not? Not like I'm doing anything else today."

He sat down on the far end of the bench from Meara, setting his lute aside.

"The name's Nele, by the way... Anyways, it was a few years ago… These two elven women showed up in Emain Macha one day. They were newly arrived from across the sea, and unfamiliar with Uladh in general, from the look of it..." He paused, seeming to consider his next words. "One was a musician, the other a dancer; they were close friends. What were their names, now...? Ahh, Yvona and Ailla, I believe? As a bard, I couldn't help but be curious about them, you see?"

"I suppose you would," Meara said.

"Well, I showed them around town, and we talked for a while about our lives. It seemed that Yvona had been exiled from their elven village, and Ailla had left with her… They didn't say why, though..."

"Did she have black hair? They kind of have a thing against that..."

"Actually, yes! I had the impression that it was over some superstition...guess I was right. Well, anyway, my old mentor took them in, and they ended up staying in Emain Macha for a couple months..."

"But something happened?"

"Yeah. One day, my mentor and Yvona got into a big argument...what she called, 'an inability to create anything new,' he called, 'upholding our traditions,' and after a lot of shouting and a few thrown books, she stormed out and never came back. Ailla went with her."

"Oh."

"Ailla came by a week later to apologize for Yvona; said Yvona didn't trust anyone anymore after being exiled, and wasn't much of a people person… She left again after that, and I haven't seen either one of them since."

"It sounds like you had some feelings for her..." Meara said.

"Ah, well... I guess I got along with Ailla pretty well, but my heart belongs to someone else, though." He leaned back against the bench, looking wistfully out at the lake for a moment, before turning back to Meara. "Maybe I was just hoping I'd meet them again someday. I mistook you for Ailla from a distance. From the back, you just happened to look a bit like her." He smiled sheepishly. "My eyesight isn't too great..."

"Gee, I wonder why." Meara waved her hand in front of his face, hinting at his unkempt long bangs that covered his eyes. "Can I interest you in a hairbrush?" She snickered.

"Hahaha... No, that's all right. I'd probably just lose it. Anyway, now I'm curious about you. Might I ask what brings _you_ here today? I'm sure you must have an interesting story to tell..." He paused for a moment. "At the least, tell me your name?"

"Meara," she said. "You could say the elves kicked me out too...but in my case, I think it was just because I was being a nuisance...asking too many questions about the nature of their society. As for why I'm here...I'm concerned about my friends."

"Your friends?"

"They're Paladin trainees...but they're being worked half to death in the Bangor mines every day, and they aren't even told what they're working towards. I'm concerned that they're being put to evil ends..."

Nele's eyes went wide.

"So you question the Paladins' motives?"

Meara's expression soured. "It's not that I think the Paladins _themselves_ are bad...I just think their _leadership_ is using them for something sinister. And either they don't see it, or they're not allowed to question it..."

"Hmm..." He looked around, as if to make sure nobody else was around to listen. "Maybe you should go speak with that wandering merchant, Price. He seems to have a connection with Redire, the greatest knight Emain Macha's ever known... If anyone still knows anything about the true meaning of being a Knight of Light, it would be him. He stops by in Emain Macha every few days. He's strange, but he's not a bad guy..."

 _Ah. So that's who he is..._

"Might as well. I'd thought to enlist myself to find out what was going on, but… now that I think of it, I might not have been able to get myself out again." Meara stood up. "I'll keep an eye out for him. Thanks."

"You're welcome. Good luck with your friends." He tipped his hat to her, then got up himself and walked off, going down the road to the east.

Meara stood up and left as well, leaving the square and heading west down the lakeside road towards the closest Moongate. She'd known the man she needed to find was a wandering merchant that went from town to town, setting up shop for a day before moving on, but now she had a name to go with the face.

 _Hmm... Price, huh? I've seen him around often enough, but I've only spoken to him once, and that was months ago…_

 _I suppose I'll have to go find him and have a little talk..._


	24. A Story of Two Siblings

**Crimson Anima, Chapter 23: A Story of Two Siblings**

* * *

Meara set her latest batch of potions in a kiosk outside the walls of Dunbarton, then set the prices on the flasks.

 _Okay, I get how to use these things, but I don't see how they keep people from just taking something without paying for it…_

She looked over the prices one more time to make sure everything was in order.

 _I guess it's just one of those things you take for granted, and don't think too hard about…_

Satisfied that everything was fine, she walked back through the town's north gates.

Down the street, on the sidewalk by the intersection, Price stood by a portable folding table covered in a leather sheet, laden with his usual...novelty wares.

 _I wonder if he sells many of those numbered signs..._

Meara had been keeping an eye on him the last few days.

 _If he follows his routine, after today he'll pack up and go to Dugald Aisle. Tomorrow, I'll speak to him there. I'd rather not have prying ears around..._

Her friends had a day off from their "training" today, and Vivian had asked to meet in the town square. While waiting for Vivian to show up, Meara walked about the looking through the various shops. She wasn't looking to buy anything; just taking note of prices.

It was well past noon by the time Vivian finally showed up. She yawned and stretched as she walked up to Meara.

"Sorry to keep you waiting... I always sleep in on my days off," she mumbled drowsily.

"Your brother too?"

"Yeah; they work him even harder... On off days, sometimes he won't even get up..."

Meara nearly had to bite her tongue to keep herself from venting a scathing tirade over their...choices. Instead, she just asked, "So, what do you want to do today?"

"Just about anything's better than fighting goblins and swinging a pickax for twelve hours. Hmm... I kind of want to practice cooking today. Okay with you?"

"Sure, why not?"

Vivian smiled. "It'll take care of lunch too."

"Provided that at least one of us doesn't end up with a pile of ashes."

"...you had to say it... That's why I want to practice."

* * *

After buying some cooking implements from Walter, ingredients from Glenis, and cookbooks from Aeira's bookstore, they set up at the open-air cookstove near the church.

Meara eyed the stove suspiciously. "How does this thing stay hot? I never see anyone adding fuel to it, and it never burns out."

"Good question...and we'd probably go mad trying to find the answer," Vivian answered. "Guess it's just one of those things we're better off not thinking about..."

"Another 'It just works so don't worry about it' thing?" Meara grumbled. "...Sometimes I think we're being kept in the dark on purpose."

"Well, whatever. Let's get started." Vivian started thumbing through the cookbook, thinking out loud as she looked over the contents. "Let's see, what can I do with these...?"

Meara took her copy and scanned through it as well, though she kept her thoughts quieter.

 _Hmm, maybe this one? No, too complex… That one? Wait, where would I even find leeks? Well, this one looks easy enough..._

Meara settled on a recipe that looked straightforward. Vivian was already sloppily mixing together ingredients, and seemed to be having some trouble getting the amounts right.

Carefully, Meara measured out the listed ingredients and added them to her pot. The trick, supposedly, was getting the proportions of the ingredients right...

 _A bit of meat, some bread, some cheese... Is this right? I...don't think I really have a good eye for this… I guess it's close enough..._

Meara carefully set her cooking pot over the fire to start baking. Vivian followed suit a moment later, but after about ten seconds, the contents of Vivian's pot erupted into a pillar of flame. She screamed in shock, pulling the pot off the fire, but was too late to save the contents from being reduced to a charred mess.

"No! No no no no no! Ugh, why does this always happen?!" She dumped the food waste out over the edge of the nearby wall.

 _At least mine hasn't spontaneously combusted yet..._

Meara poked at her pot's contents with a ladle, giving it a stir to keep them from sticking to the sides.

Vivian scraped out the last of the scorched remnants. "Ooh. I am _not_ ruining this again."

She measured out more ingredients again, with much more careful movements, small increments at a time. After furiously stirring the contents for her second attempt, she placed it on the cookstove again.

A few seconds pass without incident. Meara stirred her pot again.

"So far, so good," Vivian observed warily. "Dad always made this look so easy. How did he manage it?"

"Your father?" Meara asked.

"Yeah. He always did all the cooking around the house, at least until..." Vivian sighed. "Eh, it's a...long story...and I don't really want to think about it..."

"I could tell it if you want," came Devin's voice from behind the two girls. They turned to face him, with some surprise.

"Churning out more toxic waste? Like mother, like daughter." He laughed.

"Hey! I've only failed once today!"

Almost on cue, the contents of Vivian's cooking pot burst into flames again.

"Why?!" She gave a dejected whine and fell to her knees.

"Twice," Devin quipped. "Anyway, you don't mind if I tell her, sis?"

Vivian got up and scraped the food waste out of the pot again, dumping it over the wall. "Fine," she grumbled, muttering to herself, "I _swear_ I had it right..."

Devin leaned against the handrail. "Okay, then… Kind of a long story. Well, Dad was a gourmet chef who owned and ran a fancy high-class restaurant, while Mom couldn't even boil water. There were a lot of things like that about our parents...what one of them was bad at, the other wasn't. It was more than that, though. They were...just perfect complements to each other. If opposites attract, they were a prime example..."

Meara listened intently, keeping an eye on her pot, giving it an occasional stir.

He went on. "They stuck together for twenty years like that, always there for each other. Anyway, Mom got sick a few years ago. Leukemia. She went downhill fast." His expression darkened. "...The treatments just did more harm than good, and after a few months...she died."

Meara felt an uneasiness wash over her.

 _I'm not sure exactly what 'leukemia' is, but I get the idea: some kind of disease._

With some difficulty, Devin went on with his tale. "Dad just sort of...gave up on everything after Mom died. He sold his restaurant, he lost interest in all the things he loved, and, well..."

Vivian bowed her head in silence, pausing in her food preparation.

Devin sighed. He was struggling with this. "Right after we turned eighteen, he just...died...died in his sleep. No apparent cause. Like he lost the will to live."

He took a deep breath, then continued. "He left everything to us, but...without Mom and Dad around…" He closed his eyes, bowed his head, and turned away.

 _I can't blame him for not going on. This had to be difficult to share._

A pang of sorrow struck right at Meara's heart. She sat the ladle down on the edge of the well, and hugged Devin from behind.

"I'm sorry," she whispered.

Vivian cleared her throat loudly, then went back to measuring out ingredients.

Meara let go and stepped back. "Uh, um..." Her cheeks felt flushed.

Devin straightened his stance, but didn't turn to face her. "Thanks, Meara..."

"I... I can't relate, but… Still, you have my sympathy…" Meara looked back at Vivian. "Both of you."

Vivian was once more focused intently on the pot before her.

 _Oh, wait a minute…!_

Meara grabbed the ladle and looked at her own cooking.

 _I think it's done. Looks about right…_

She pulled the pot off the stove and quickly set it down on the ground before it burned her hands, then put the ladle down on the edge of the well again.

"Figures _you'd_ get it right," Vivian scoffed, glaring at her.

Meara glared right back. "Hey, I've burned my share of dishes. You remember; I've just about set that tree on fire a dozen times."

"Yeah, but at least you got better at it." Vivian scowled. "Oh, well…"

"Third time's the charm, maybe?" Devin asked.

"Here's hoping," she said, putting the pot back on the fire.

It was not to be, as it soon burst into flames a few seconds later.

"Why doesn't this work?!" she screamed.

"At least you're consistent, sis."

"Consistency is only a virtue when I don't screw up."

"What are you trying to make, anyway? Show me the recipe," Meara asked.

"This," Vivian indicated, pointing at the open page in the cookbook.

Meara skimmed over the text.

 _What...? Is that all she's doing wrong…?_

Meara pointed at a line in the cooking directions. "Well, no wonder you keep failing it; this is supposed to be simmered, not baked."

"What?" Vivian facepalmed, shaking her head. "How did I miss that?!"

Devin laughed. "Nobody trips over mountains, but the molehills get you every time."

Vivian's face contorted in anger, and she threw her ladle at her brother. He sidestepped and it flew past him, down the steps.

"Try again," he said.

Vivian grabbed Meara's ladle and started mixing ingredients again.

Out of the corner of Meara's eye, she spotted Price walking up the main street, heading north out of town with his large satchel slung over his shoulder.

 _Looks like he's right on schedule._

Tomorrow she would go speak with Price as she had planned; he'd be at the logging camp, with few prying ears to listen in. And tomorrow her friends would have to go back to toiling in the mines again...

 _For now, it's nice to enjoy the day with my friends, while they have the time._

"Hey, I think it worked this time!" Vivian exclaimed. The pot _didn't_ erupt into flames for once.

Meara looked up at the sky. Something in the back of her mind was bothering her...

 _That story about their parents… Somehow, something about that...just feels familiar…_


	25. To Find a Path

**Crimson Anima, Chapter 24: To Find a Path**

* * *

Meara woke up in the bed in her usual room at the inn with a gasp, as the last echoes of a dream started to fade from her mind.

It was a vague feeling; in that dream, someone had been holding her in their arms, a tall, strong figure, and he had spoken a single sentence.

" _They will pay for what they have done."_

She tried to repeat the scene in her mind, trying to keep it from fading away to nothing, trying to coax more details from the maw of oblivion.

It...had been more than a dream.

She'd _remembered_ something.

As Meara racked her mind, trying to add more substance to this little shard of her past that had somehow come back to her, a dull pain flared up along the sides of her head, above her ears, where the headaches she kept getting always hit hardest. It was a feeling of building pressure, like something in her head was trying to beat its way out.

 _Ugh...it's back already. It's getting worse… I didn't even use any magic yesterday…_

The beating on the inside of her skull throbbed in counterpoint with her heartbeat. She threw off the bedsheet, swung her feet over the side, and sat on the edge of the bed, slumped forward, hands on the side of her head.

 _Why are the headaches back already? I just rebirthed a few days ago; usually that gets rid of them for a couple weeks or more…_

She pushed herself off the bed to stand up, and wearily rose to her feet.

 _They're coming back faster now; why? Maybe I'll ask Dilys… Later._

In a haze of pain, she fumbled through her belongings, dug out a peach-colored potion, and gulped down the sour concoction. The pain gradually faded away after a couple of minutes.

 _Good thing I can make wound remedy potions now; I may need them a lot more…_

She left her room, crept down the stairs while clinging to the banister, and waved at Piaras as she walked out the door. After being here so long, she essentially had a permanent reservation at his inn. These days, though, now that she was making a decent income from potions, she just paid the standard rate in gold rather than take up her time doing tasks to earn her keep.

She was luckier than most. Two dozen tents were set up in the south fields of Tir Chonaill by otherwise homeless Milletians. There were more arriving every day, and every open field was starting to turn into a tent city.

Meara crossed the bridge outside the inn, mulling over that night's dream as she walked past the windmill. It had definitely been more than a dream. She'd committed what she could hold on to into her memory, a tiny piece of a lost past finally reclaimed. If only she could recall more… It seemed like...something bad had happened to her...but what?

Too little to go on, and no context.

Meara crossed another bridge, and went through the Moongate to the logging camp in Dugald Isle. She felt only slightly perturbed by the dislocation as reality _shifted_ around her; first she was in one place, then in another.

Maybe she _was_ getting used to it.

Today, the camp was abuzz with activity, the sounds of chopping and woodworking filling the air, a dozen workers hard at work cutting and shaping logs into palisade stakes. And there Price was, under a lean-to shelter, sitting at a table with his wares set up.

Meara warily approached his table.

"Good morning! See something you like?"

 _Oh, I certainly do... No! Pure thoughts, Meara. Stay focused._

"Actually, I'm more interested in some information... Like, what you might know about Redire? I've heard you knew him…"

Price's gaze narrowed. "Yeah...you could say I knew him. I knew him pretty well." He paused. "Haven't heard from him since the Fomors sacked Emain Macha several years ago, though. Why do you ask...?"

"Well, I've found myself in a rather difficult situation, and I'm wondering how a great hero the likes of him would have gone about dealing with it."

Price looked at Meara oddly, crossing his arms. His expression hardened.

 _Did I say something wrong?_

"...difficult situation?" His expression lightened a bit. "Maybe you'd better explain this in more detail. I've never been that good at giving advice, but at least I'll hear you out."

Meara cautiously looked around, as if expecting someone to be eavesdropping, but everyone around the camp seemed to be focused on the tasks before them. Satisfied that nobody was listening in, she continued.

"Are you aware Paladin trainees are being used as forced labor to mine gold? Two of my friends are caught up with them and I'm not sure what to do about it… I can't stand to watch them suffering..."

Price raised an eyebrow. "Is that so? Well, it's not the first I've heard of it, but..." He put a hand to his chin. "The source of your problem is higher up the chain of command, I'm afraid. Things haven't been the same there since the Tragedy..."

"What, their leader Craig? Is he the problem?"

Price lowered his hand again. "No... He's a good man, but he's too naive to question his orders. If he was told to march off a cliff, he'd probably do it without asking why. At least not where anyone could hear him do it."

"Then...?"

"I'm talking about the prime minister, Esras. _She's_ the one who's been pulling their strings the last few years. The Paladins answer to her now, and not the Church. She was only meant to be a temporary regent because of Lord Rian's age, but she's still in power now, even though Rian should be more than old enough to have taken the reins..."

Meara scowled. "Oh, that condescending minister that told me to mind my own business and 'not get involved in human matters.'" She put her hands on her hips. "She doesn't think very highly of elves, it seems."

Price's eyes widened. "You've met Esras? ...You went in for an audience with the Lord, I take it. Did you see Lord Rian? How was he?"

"He looked...very sick... Practically on death's door. He couldn't even speak…"

 _Maybe I shouldn't say anything about Lord Rian whispering, 'help me.' I'm not sure that I didn't just imagine it…_

Price clenched his fists, and his expression turned more grim. Clearly he didn't like the sound of this. "I see… So, that's what's been going on. I was afraid of this..."

As quickly as his expression betrayed his distress, it just as quickly went back to neutral, as if he hadn't a care in the world. "Anyway... To answer your original question...? I take it your friends are convinced they can become Knights of Light just through training? If they really want to go down that path… Then they need to follow the example of Lugh Lavada. Now there's a _real_ hero for you. Just about everyone in Uladh knows of him and his heroic deeds, blessed by the gods and spirits."

"Just my luck, I'm not from around here..." Meara said.

"That Redire, he was just a pale imitation. From what I hear, he got himself killed by the Dark Lord during the tragedy of Emain Macha. Well, that's how the rumors go, but I haven't seen him since then, so...who knows?"

"Dark Lord? ...knight in black armor, has a really big sword?" Meara said. "...My friends and I have dealt with him before...it's a long story..."

"Really, now?" This seemed to pique his interest. "Then maybe you've got the potential. If they really want to be Knights of Light, as you say...they're better off finding their own path to it, rather than trying to follow someone else's. Becoming a Knight of Light isn't something you're given, it's something you find within yourself. Though, that's not to say someone can't point them in the right direction..."

Meara shook her head. "I don't know… They're totally convinced they're on the right path, though. As much as they're suffering, they think there's some greater good they're serving, and...I can't bring myself to question them..."

"If your friends insist on staying the course under Esras' bootheel, maybe they need to be inspired to reconsider... Actions speak louder than words for most people. If you can't sway them with words, perhaps you should lead them by example?"

"Me?" Meara pointed at herself for a second. "It's not my place to go looking for that kind of power... I _do_ want to point them in the right direction, though, but…" She tapped her right ear. "Besides, I'm not a human, would it even work the same way?"

"Hmm... Perhaps it wouldn't..." His expression turned pensive. "Well, then...guess we have to go to plan B." He reached into his pack and took out a small piece of paper, then handed it to Meara. "Here's a voucher for a book from Aeira's bookshop in Dunbarton. Try and get your friends to read it. And read it yourself, for good measure."

Meara took the paper, a folded coupon. She accepted it, and put it away after glancing at what was written on it.

 _Huh. 'Food for the Soul for True Good Deeds,' huh? Sounds preachy. Well, I'll give it a shot…_

Price continued. "Don't take what you read in it literally, just treat it as a guide. As for what the Paladins are up to, they're carrying out Esras' orders now… Whatever they are, no good'll come of it in the end. Don't give up on your friends, and do your best to get them out."

"What do _you_ think they're up to?" Meara asked.

"I can't say for sure… I'm looking into it. I still have connections among the Paladins, and some of Emain Macha's nobles. We're looking for evidence of Esras' intentions… What she's up to, what she's done... The unauthorized mining is only part of something bigger."

"Maybe they're building some kind of weapon?"

"It's possible… Once my contacts pick up on some leads, I'd like you to help me confirm their findings… Then we'll take action, if there's solid proof. When we have something to go on, I'll get back to you... Um, what's your name?"

"Meara."

He held his hand out. Meara put her hand in his, and they shook hands.

 _Ow, what a grip!_

"I'll look forward to hearing from you, then." Meara withdrew her hand and shook it a bit.

"Ah, sorry about that," he said warily. "Well, there's just one issue, though… You see, some of my contacts have...either vanished, or starting acting oddly. I'm not sure who I can trust anymore. Since you're an...outsider, I think I can confide in you."

"All right." Meara nodded. "I think I'd like to get to the bottom of this as much as you."

"I'll send word when I think we've got something. Take care, and...keep out of trouble for now."

"Right. I'll be waiting." Meara turned, and walked away, heading back towards the Moongate.

 _Since I can't act on my own in Emain Macha without drawing unwanted attention, I guess I'm going to have to wait on Price..._


End file.
